The United States men’s soccer coach, Gregg Berhalter, defended on Tuesday his decision to exclude the young Juventus midfielder Weston McKennie from two games of the qualifying rounds for the Qatar-2022 World Cup for violation of the protocol against the coronavirus.
The 23-year-old McKennie was out late in Sunday’s game against Canada (1-1) in Nashville, Tennessee, and was later excluded from the trip to Honduras for Wednesday’s crucial clash.
ESPN reported Tuesday that McKennie had been expelled from the national team after spending a night outside of the team’s “bubble” environment in Nashville and allowing an unauthorized person to enter his hotel room on another occasion.
At the press conference before the crash in San Pedro Sula, Berhalter did not want to go into details about the McKennie case.
However, the coach stressed that it had been necessary to adopt this decision despite the fact that it implied losing one of his best players at a difficult moment in qualifying for Qatar-2022.
The United States has only added two points in the first two dates of the final octagonal of Concacaf.
“When it comes to team policies and rules and what we are trying to achieve as a team, the team absolutely comes first,” Berhalter stressed in the press video conference.
“We have made this decision not only for the short term, but for the long-term health of the program,” he stressed. It’s not an easy decision, believe me. But we did it for what we believe is the good of the group.
Berhalter added that McKennie had apologized after the incident that led to his departure, and stressed that the footballer continues to have a future with the national team.
“Weston and I have had long conversations, he’s a guy I really appreciate,” Berhalter said. “He is an important part of the team, and when he performs well, he will come back.”
We’re going to miss Weston on Wednesday, but that doesn’t rule him out for the future. People make mistakes. Weston apologized to the group and apologized to me. They are things that happen “, settled the strategist. The United States is looking to qualify for the World Cup with a very renewed team led by young people such as McKennie, Christian Pulisic (Chelsea) or Sergiño Dest (FC Barcelona), after their disappointing absence from the last championship of Russia-2018. (AFP) =
US DT defends McKennie sanction for violating anti-covid rules
