Speaking of McKennie, he, too, is a player in focus, given his strong form with Juventus. On Friday, Pulisic was asked about whether McKennie has changed at all to reach his current level. His response drew laughs. <\/p>\n
“No vibe change,” Pulisic said with a smile. “Not change at all.”<\/p>\n
McKennie, of course, is a unique presence in the USMNT team, on and off the field. Off of it, he’s the type of person who keeps a team loose, which is even more important given the pressure of a looming World Cup. On it, too, he may have a bigger role than ever as Pochettino seems keen to let him loose in a way similar to how Juve have this season. That decision has worked wonders for Juve, who have benefitted from his growth into one of Serie A’s most dangerous weapons.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Pulisic said of McKennie’s big season so far. “It seems like people talk down on him, and then he’s right back there. He’s doing his thing, scoring goals, playing every minute – that’s what he does. He’s obviously a big part of his team there and a big part of the team here. It doesn’t surprise me, but it’s awesome to follow and awesome to see him doing well.”<\/p>\n
How does that manifest itself in this camp? Is he given free rein as an attacking midfielder? With Adams out, will he be asked to contribute a little deeper? As always, McKennie is confident he can contribute wherever.<\/p>\n
“What you can try and mimic is your effort, your confidence, and the ability to want to help the team,” McKennie said. “Playing overseas and playing with your team back home, there are different tactics and different ways of playing, but I think you want to come here with the same confidence, the same ability, and try to help the team as much as you can.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking of McKennie, he, too, is a player in focus, given his strong form with Juventus. On Friday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[283,15311,25547,2664,11476,85,46,174802,39794,105,2586,174803,174801],"class_list":["post-361680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-analysis","tag-belgium","tag-c-pulisic","tag-features","tag-friendlies","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-j-cardoso","tag-m-pochettino","tag-sports","tag-usa","tag-usa-vs-belgium","tag-w-mckennie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}