USMNT: Weston McKennie Details Abuse From Leeds United Fans
In an exclusive interview with The Athletic, the midfielder discussed his time in England.
In an exclusive interview with The Athletic, Weston McKennie detailed the abuse he dealt with when the club ended up getting relegated in the 2022-23 season.
“I like to think I’m someone that has a thick skin,” McKennie told The Athletic. “When you get little comments here and there, it’s pretty easy to ignore. But then when you open up your phone and always the first thing you see on social is something negative, it’s hard to ignore it. I guess it’s hard for me because I do love it when people can relate to me and I feel like I’m always a happy person.
“Football is a world where it’s sometimes unforgiving,” he added. “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.”
McKennie then gave examples of the type of abuse he received. The hateful comments varied from attacking his weight to racist abuse.
“When people started attacking me — me as a person in general, not even with football — everyone knows that I’m more thick-boned than some other players, in that my body shape is the way that it is. But when people started out saying, ‘You fat bast**d’ and ‘you pig’ and ‘you m*nkey’ and stuff like that, people don’t really realize the effect that it has on people,” the midfielder said. “I like to be happy and to make people happy, to make people laugh. So that was a little bit hard.”
McKennie is now facing an uncertain future at the club level. His contract is set to expire at Juventus in 12 months and a potential player swap that would send McKennie to Aston Villa is now in limbo. If the midfielder is to move to a new club, McKennie told The Athletic that it would be resolved after the Copa America tournament.
This is yet another stark reminder that life as a professional athlete isn’t always glitz and glamour. Athletes are not robots whose lone purpose in life is to perform for fans. They are humans just like the rest of us.
McKennie and the USMNT begin its Copa America journey on Sunday as they face Bolivia in Dallas.