McKennie on Leeds ‘lowest point,’ depressing England and Juventus snub | OneFootball

Juventus midfielder Weston McKennie said Leeds United was the ‘lowest point’ of his career and the way he talks about England being ‘depressing’ might explain his reticence to join Aston Villa.

The USMNT star was meant to be part of the exchange deal to bring Douglas Luiz to Turin, with Samuel Iling-Junior and €20m cash going the other way, but he hesitated so much that the entire transfer strategy had to be amended.

McKennie was removed from the equation and replaced with young midfielder Enzo Barrenechea, forcing Juve to increase the monetary sum to balance out the difference.

His contract with the Bianconeri only runs to June 2025 and the club has no intention of extending, but he tells The Athletic that he does not want to make a decision until after the Copa America.

Looking through the interview, it is perhaps easy to see why McKennie was against the idea of a return to the Premier League after a six-month loan spell with Leeds United.

McKennie tells The Athletic his Leeds regrets

“My time at Leeds was probably one of my lower points, if not the lowest in my professional career. I always look at the positive because I was at Juventus, playing week in and week out, and maybe I developed a little bit of comfortability or complacency, knowing I was going to play on the weekend.

“By going to Leeds and having the performance that I had there and the way that it just turned out in general — four coaches in five months, just nothing going to plan or how I imagined it.”

He fully admits Leeds were seen as a stepping stone and that probably didn’t help the fan reaction to his performances, where he was blasted repeatedly on social media for a poor attitude.

“When I went there, my head was more, ‘OK, I want to go here, perform very well, put up numbers, help the team stay up and then hopefully another Premier League team, top five, comes in and sees how well I’ve played and then they would buy me.’

“With all the respect to Leeds and their fans, I love Champions League football. I love playing at the highest level. Leeds was more of a place I wanted to go to experience something new, the Premier League. But there’s no better place to be seen by Premier League teams than if you’re playing in the Premier League,” noted McKennie.

“Football is a world where it’s sometimes unforgiving. People obviously don’t know what football players go through and the stress football players put on themselves to perform, because it’s not like we want to perform badly. It’s not like we want to lose games. It’s just sometimes you have ups and downs, so it hurts.

“It was probably the first time besides for the World Cup exit where I cried, after the last game of the season at Leeds, when we officially got relegated. I hate to lose and I felt like I really let down the expectations that people had of me going there.”

McKennie warns that while he has ‘a thick skin,’ it is not easy to shake off very personal and at times racist insults from fans of your own club.

“Luckily, I had my personal chef, Patrick Contorno, who works with me in Italy, and he was living over in England with me and I had my assistant Charles also living with me.

“If you’re in a down mood in England, it can be hard to deal with it because it’s also very bad weather most of the time. It’s rainy and gloomy and it just sets the mood for you to already be in a sad mood. I had those guys there with me and it helped a lot. If I was there alone, I would have definitely gone into, like, a state of complete depression because I wasn’t performing. I’m my own biggest critic.”

McKennie found Juventus had frozen him out

Juventus had been hoping to sell McKennie that summer, but surprisingly he managed to earn his place in the team back by convincing coach Max Allegri.

“I knew it was going to be (challenging). I didn’t know it was going to be to that extent; where I didn’t have my locker, I didn’t have a room in the hotel, I didn’t have a parking space. I changed in the locker rooms with the academy kids, even when you had players in the main locker room who had never played a game for Juventus because they’d always been out on loan. And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Wow, I’ve only been gone for six months. I come back and I am treated like this’.

“I couldn’t even get my shirt number, even though nobody else had taken the number. I was like, ‘OK you guys want to treat me like this? I’m just going to show you on the field’.

“I’m not someone that’s problematic. I don’t like to cause problems. I don’t like uncomfortable situations. I don’t like drama. I just try and let my football, my actions and my work ethic show everything about me, because that’s when I feel like I’m at my best.”

That spell at Leeds took him back to square one at Juventus and it helped McKennie to remember what it was like the first time he came to Turin in 2020.

“It grounded me… what I’m most comfortable with and most honest with is when I put my head down and work. That’s where I’ve had my biggest success. I left Schalke and went to Juventus and nobody knew me. Everyone doubted me. It’s too big of a club. I’ll never play.

“But look at me now. Three and a half years later, more than 100 games for Juventus and I played a majority of those games. I thrive when my back’s against the wall and everyone’s doubting me. That’s how I became the player I was,” concluded McKennie.