Weston McKennie, the Juventus midfielder, was absent again as the Bianconeri beat Chelsea 1-0 in a pre-season friendly on August 6, the latest in a sequence of omissions that has now extended across multiple squads under Luciano Spalletti's management. The 27-year-old American was not part of the group that faced the English side, and Spalletti's post-match comments addressed Kenan Yildiz's fitness and the team's attitude without any reference to McKennie's situation.
The pattern is no longer ambiguous. Spalletti has now excluded McKennie from consecutive pre-season squads, and the club's summer activity — loans, sales, and structural decisions — is proceeding entirely around him rather than with him. Juventus sent Joao Mario to Fiorentina on loan with an option to buy at €11.3m, and moved Vasilije Adzic to Sassuolo for further development. These are the transactions of a club reorganising its roster with purpose. McKennie's name appears in none of them.
His Serie A numbers from 2025-26 tell the story of a player who contributed without ever becoming indispensable. Across 35 appearances, McKennie registered five goals and five assists, carrying an average rating of 6.90 — functional, consistent, but not the profile of a player a coach fights to retain when rebuilding. Juventus finished sixth with 68 points from 37 matches, a respectable but not exceptional campaign, and Spalletti is evidently determined to raise that ceiling. The players he is keeping, and the ones he is moving on, reflect a clear hierarchy.
Edon Zhegrova scored the goal that beat Chelsea and immediately declared his desire to stay at Juventus — only for reports to indicate that Spalletti and the club continue to regard him as available for transfer. That dynamic, a player wanting to remain while the club pushes toward an exit, is a mirror image of McKennie's own position, except McKennie has not been given the stage of a pre-season appearance from which to make his case.
At 27, with an AI overall rating of 69 and a potential ceiling of 75, McKennie retains market value and the physical profile to perform at a high level. The question is no longer whether he fits Spalletti's Juventus — the answer to that has been delivered through selection, not words — but where he goes next and whether a move materialises before the window closes. Juventus are building toward something; McKennie's task now is to find a project that builds toward him.