Weston McKennie and the New Normalcy
Something very ordinary and expected happened yesterday, and that's pretty cool.
Celebrating anything that feels remotely normal is important these days. For people in the U.S., the return of March represents a full year of lockdowns, quarantines, re-openings, closings of the re-openings, re-re-openings, and so on. The cycle is exhausting. Sport is a welcome escape for us, but those with some USMNT-leanings have been forced to deal with existential dreads both old (a dual-national choosing a different country) and new (maybe that star player isn’t a star and maybe also he believes some reprehensible things). So let’s lighten the mood a little bit, shall we?
Juventus officially exercised their option in the loan deal for Weston McKennie, and his transfer to one of the oldest and best clubs in the world is now permanent. Great news, right? USMNT fans waltzing through the streets about it, right?
Not really. People are happy, sure. But the exuberance hasn’t matched, say, the moment Weston first showed up in Italy. This was an expected move, after all. McKennie has been one of Juve’s best players this season. Of course they were going to sign him permanently. For so little money? It was a steal.
It seems, for all the world, very normal.
“Normalcy” isn’t a real word. Or it didn’t used to be. “Normality” was the more accepted vocabulary word for being in a state of normal. That didn’t stop President Warren G. Harding from making it his campaign slogan in 1920, and despite the improper grammar, the word caught on. People were taken with it, as well as Harding’s simple campaign goal: return to life the way it used to be. The life before World War I, and before the Spanish Flu. It wasn’t fireworks and big brass bands. It was the simple feeling of normalcy. Regardless of how well he did or did not accomplish that, the statement resonated with people. And so “normalcy” became a distinctly American entry into the English dictionary, a word not only denoting the normal, but also the comfortable, the gentle, the easy bits of life.
Many people did not think McKennie would do so well at Juventus.
Dummies, am I right? But the speed at which McKennie has made his permanent transfer to Juventus a simple, normal reality has been breathtaking. I would not have said that McKennie was our best player in Europe at the beginning of this season in all the million Dr. Strange universes. There wasn’t one. Full stop. And yet, here we are. We’ve moved past “Weston McKennie belongs at this level” and fully into “Weston McKennie is one of Juve’s best midfielders.”
And the best part? It just feels normal.
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Bye Bye Lil’ Sebastian
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What You Need to Know:
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”It tasted like sweat and tears,” said noted MLS Cup Licker James Paul Conrad, who put his tastebuds all over that trophy after winning it for the San Jose Earthquakes in 2001. It was “a little salty, if I’m being honest.”
But what is victory if not sweat and tears? What is glory if not a little salty? The cold metal stained with the power and effort of your teammates, christened with the spit of legend.
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