Tim sat for this interview in May, for a profile to run during the tournament. His parents were rummaging around upstairs somewhere. They\u2019d both sit with the reporter when Tim was finished. Every one of these stories seemed to come with the same tagline, though. \u201cI always hear them say, \u2018Timothy Weah, son of George Weah,\u2019\u201d Clar Weah, Tim\u2019s mother, said. \u201cI\u2019ve heard it so many times: \u2018Son of George Weah.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe that\u2019s because George has had an outsize impact on his son\u2019s career. Tim certainly inherited his soccer talent from his father. According to family lore, Tim started kicking a ball when he was barely 1 year old. Not just any ball, either \u2014 a soccer ball designed for 12-year-olds. \u201cI said, \u2018Oh, this could be interesting,\u2019\u201d George said.<\/p>\n
As a preteen, Tim started playing with an elite New York-area club team. George saw enough potential that, when the boy was 13, he helped connect Tim with Chelsea of the English Premier League, one of his former teams, about possible entry into its youth academy. Chelsea turned them down. But George had more connections. He set Tim up with Paris Saint-Germain, another of his former clubs, which took in his son. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cHe proved himself,\u201d George said, unprompted. \u201cHe did not just earn it because one of his parents played. He worked so hard. He fought very hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tim spent the next several years in France, training at PSG\u2019s academy. There, he had the chance to work with world-class coaches and trainers, honing his game around the clock. \u201cI learned so much,\u201d Tim said. \u201cThey built me into the player that I am to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n
PSG\u2019s senior team featured some of the best players in the world \u2014 Neymar, \u00c1ngel Di Mar\u00eda, Kylian Mbapp\u00e9. But Tim only played a handful of games with the senior club. He was still a teenager and wasn\u2019t a wunderkind like those others, or like his father once upon a time. Naturally, Tim had to deal with being constantly compared with his father, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have a dad who\u2019s successful, if you\u2019re having a bad game, they often say, \u2018His dad is better,\u2019\u201d Clar said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tim sat for this interview in May, for a profile to run during the tournament. His parents were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-724941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}