Report: MLS side FC Cincinnati makes bid for Weston McKennie
Report: MLS side FC Cincinnati makes bid for Weston McKennie
it is no secret that after everything that happened over the last week or so, Weston McKennie is very much on the market for a new club. Juventus did not meet his asking price for a new contract, and therefore the two sides seem very likely to part ways this summer in the same kind of fashion we thought would happen 12 months ago before he suddenly found himself back in the squad.
Things with Aston Villa, at least from McKennie’s end, are not going to happen. And that means the hunt for a new club continues — which suddenly involves a league that we didn’t think was in consideration (or might still not be in consideration).
According to a report from Kristian Dyer on USA Today’s Pro Soccer Wire, one of Major League Soccer’s top clubs, FC Cincinnati, have made a bid to try and lure McKennie back to the United States and the country’s top league. Dyer’s report says that FC Cincinnati — which currently has the second-best record in MLS — has made a bid for McKennie that has them “willing to go as high as $15 million” when it comes to a transfer fee.
Considering how things went with the last round of contract negotiations ahead of a potential move, FC Cincinnati would likely have to make the 25-year-old McKennie one of the highest paid players in the league. McKennie’s current salary of around €2.5 million net would have him just outside the top 10 of MLS’ highest earners, a list that includes former Juve teammate Federico Bernardeschi, who is ninth at $3.125 million per season.
In an article on The Athletic that was published earlier in the day before he was linked with a move back to MLS, McKennie detailed the personal struggles that went with his loan move to Leeds United and then the less-than-stellar conditions in which he returned to at Juventus. He talked about having to change in the locker rooms with Juve’s academy players because of all the changes that had happened since he that previous January.
““I knew it was going to be (challenging),” McKennie said of his return to Juve last summer. “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.”
When it comes to a potential move away from Juventus this summer, it is described as “(McKennie’s) options will be laid out and resolved after Copa America.”
As we know, McKennie is coming off a very strong season with Juventus. He started the most league games of his career, and was one of Juventus’ most-played players in terms of minutes. His 10 assists in all competitions were a career high.
At this point, who really knows what will materialize between McKennie’s camp and FC Cincinnati. With everything that happened with Aston Villa, it’s hard to say what the market for him will be like over the next couple of weeks as he competes in Copa America.