Weston McKennie, who was suspended from Sunday’s game against Canada and sent to Juventus on Monday for violating the US team’s rules, has dominated the conversation around the USMNT for the past 48 hours.
On Tuesday, a day before a suddenly crucial qualifier in Honduras, the discussion around the 23-year-old midfielder reached a new level, with details about the nature of the rape that head coach Gregg Berhalter took to send McKennie. ESPN reported that the 23-year-old spent a night out of the team’s coronavirus bubble while in Nashville before the Canadian game and confirmed a TUDN report that brought an unauthorized individual into his room. of hotel inside the bubble on a different night. A source confirmed to Athletic that McKennie broke the COVID-19 protocol on two separate occasions, but did not go into the details of his actual infractions.
Berhalter and US Soccer have not gone into detail about the details of McKennie’s offense. He only said he violated the team’s COVID-19 protocols in a statement posted on his Instagram on Sunday.
“When you talk about team policies and rules and what we’re trying to achieve as a team, the team comes first,” Berhalter said. “And we made that decision not just for the short term, but for the long-term health of the program. And it’s not an easy decision. Trust me, countless coaches face decisions in which they have to take talented players out of a lineup for one reason or another, but we have done so for what we believe is the good of the group and the good of the team.