At the time, Weston McKennie couldn’t have imagined the ultimate destination. It was the fall of 2017, and he was 19 years old. At that point, the young midfielder had been at Schalke 04 for a little more than a year and was fewer than a dozen Bundesliga games into his senior pro career. Juventus wasn’t in the picture. Moving to a club like that was inconceivable.
But moving forward wasn’t. That’s why McKennie was there—why he’d given up on a choice between a scholarship to the University of Virginia and a contract with FC Dallas—because Germany was the ideal launch pad.