This article is the latest in our My Game In My Words 2024 series. Click here to find all the articles in the series.
When you cross the threshold of the Juventus Creator Lab, it’s supposed to be like stepping into the future. But, on a rainy Thursday in Turin, it feels like going back in time. Kenan Yildiz, the custodian of the team’s most prestigious jersey, the No 10 worn in the past by Michel Platini, Roberto Baggio and Alessandro Del Piero, has spontaneously stopped by after training to play table football with some club employees. The atmosphere is wholesome and down-to-earth.
Tim Weah walks in and, as he sits down for an interview with The Athletic, makes a point of putting his phone on silent and slips it into his pocket. The way he carries himself is polite, softly spoken, and engaging. Weah isn’t the only famous son around these parts. Team-mates old and new, Federico Chiesa and Khephren Thuram, have fathers who used to play in Serie A in the 1990s, too, when the Italian league was the best the world has ever seen. Tim’s old man, George, won that league with one of the great AC Milan sides, became the only African player to win the Ballon d’Or, then ran for election in Liberia and served as its president.
But there’s no entitlement, no pretension whatsoever, about Tim and you get the impression that Juventus’ former patron, the iconic Gianni Agnelli, would have loved the young man and no doubt made him one of the group of players he used to call at six in the morning. The pair of them would have shared a passion for New York. Fiat had an office in midtown Manhattan’s Seagram Building in the 1970s. Agnelli had a place nearby on Park Avenue and spent his free time visiting galleries and collections recommended by art dealers including Eugene Thaw and Leo Castelli.
He used to nickname his players after great artists. Everyone at Juventus just affectionately calls Weah ‘Timmy’.
This is Timmy’s game in his words…
He has been in Turin for a little over a year. “It’s a nice, calm city,” he says. “Not as fast as Milan.” Or New York for that matter. “I think it’s perfect for an athlete. You have a pretty humble life here.” To some consternation, he still prefers the pizza back home, but it’s no surprise when there are spots like Lucali in Brooklyn. You can take the boy out of New York etc.
He’s a “heavy” New York sports fan. Always has been. Always will be. And what a time to be one now. His NFL team, the Jets, fired their head coach Robert Saleh after five games. Weah is buddies with Jets wide receiver Allen Lazard. And as we speak he’s pulling for another of his friends, Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor, to make the World Series, where neighbours the Yankees now await.
The assumption with Weah has always been that his destiny was to make it as a footballer and follow in the footsteps of his dad. “Honestly, my parents didn’t force football on me,” he says. “It’s something I kind of just ended up doing. When I was younger, I used to play basketball.”
He loves the New York Knicks, too, and got caught up in their run to the Conference semi-finals last season. “You know how long we’ve been waiting for that,” he says. “Years! The only playoff runs I do remember, and they weren’t even deep into the playoffs, was when Carmelo (Anthony), Amar’e (Stoudemire), Steve Novak and those guys were playing for the Knicks (from 2011-13). That’s the time I remember. That was a fun time to watch the Knicks. But that team never really got anywhere in terms of, like, getting that ring. So this was the closest we’ve been in a long time. So it was fun.”
Juventus used to have a hoop outside the gym at the training ground where Max Allegri, the manager at the time, and midfielder Paul Pogba used to have free-throw contests. Unfortunately, someone took it down. Weah has one at home and while he was too small at 6ft (183cm) to make it in the NBA, he does see commonalities between football and basketball. “Mentality-wise, we’re kind of feeding the same thing into football players that the basketball players are getting,” he says. When The Athletic brings up Pep Guardiola’s chats with Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla about spacing, Weah jokingly says of the Manchester City manager: “He’s doing too much. Just enjoy the game.” That’s what Weah did as a kid growing up in Queens, the most easterly of New York’s five boroughs.
“It’s funny,” he fondly recalls, “because my mom (Clar) was my first coach and people used to complain all the time because all I wanted to do was just go to goal and score and do all those things. So, I mean, that’s probably the earliest memory that I have; just taking the ball and dribbling the whole field.” Like his dad when he ran the length of the pitch for Milan and scored one of the most famous goals in Serie A history, against Verona.
#TBT 🗓
“I saw that goal from the bench, and I enjoyed it even more” 💭
Let’s relive Weah’s coast to coast thanks to Marco Simone’s memories 🗣
👉🏻 pic.twitter.com/8Mclm3wx6r— AC Milan (@acmilan) May 3, 2018
“I’ve seen this goal like a million times,” Weah says as we roll the clip on YouTube. It’s from nearly 30 years ago, but it never gets old. Referees let a lot more, quite literally, slide in those days, when Serie A prided itself on the world’s best (roughhouse) defending. “To be that great of a dribbler, especially in that period where players are coming for legs, they were coming hard at you… it sounds crazy, but yeah…” Weah trails off in awe.
He chose to become a footballer in his own right in his early teens. Weah went from school to the youth ranks of New York Red Bulls. “We didn’t really take it too seriously,” he says. It was recreation, not succession. “I was kind of doing my own thing and then it started to get serious when I started to get the call-ups for the youth (U.S.) national team. That’s when my mom was like, ‘OK, we can possibly do something with this. So let’s start trying to figure out a plan’.”
Weah celebrates scoring against Paraguay at the Under-17 World Cup in 2017 (Jan Kruger – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
It was all pretty organic. His appearances for the U.S. got Weah exposure in Europe. Opportunities to try out for big clubs presented themselves. “I went to trial at Chelsea when I was younger. I spent some time there with guys like Tammy Abraham, Fikayo Tomori, all those guys,” he reflects. “Then I went to (French club) Toulouse on trial, which went very well. I ended up playing against PSG (Paris Saint-Germain) and that’s how PSG saw me. They asked me to come over and, yeah, I mean, the decision for me was a no-brainer. PSG! Who doesn’t want to play for PSG? At the time, they had Zlatan Ibrahimovic, (Edinson) Cavani. All these great players. So I was like, yeah, I definitely want to take the chance.”
Weah’s father had made his name at PSG in the early 1990s, playing for great teams that featured Rai, Leonardo and David Ginola, and although Dad’s glittering past opened doors for him and meant people were welcoming, Tim got there on his own merit. “When we made that decision, it was kind of a rough one,” Weah admits, “because I was like, ‘Dang, I’m leaving home. I’m leaving my friends. I’m out of school’. I had been playing for the Red Bulls, where I had so many friends and I was so comfortable. It was rough. But I knew that I had to make the sacrifice if I wanted to become a professional player.”
It was a big jump. Paris and the broader Ile de France catchment area is arguably the most competitive place in Europe to become a footballer. It has produced Pogba, Kylian Mbappe and Adrien Rabiot. Roughly a third of any given France squad, sometimes more, tends to be Paris-born-and-bred. Coming through at the same time as Weah were Christopher Nkunku, who Chelsea later signed from RB Leipzig for £52million ($68m), and Moussa Diaby, who Aston Villa subsequently sold to Al Ittihad of Saudi Arabia for around the same price. In his class were guys including Yacine Adli (now at Fiorentina), Claudio Gomes (part of City Football Group’s Palermo side) and Stefan Nsoki (Hoffenheim). Weah was their hard-working, generous striker.
“So the player they wanted me to sculpt my game around was Cavani,” Weah explains. “For me, he is a top-tier No 9, one of the best to ever play the game in that position.” Weah credits David Bechkoura, his former youth-team coach at PSG, with giving him a “whole bunch of information” and a “whole lot of video” on Cavani’s game. “It’s not only his goals but the runs he makes, the selfish runs that open up space. His work-rate is amazing,” Weah continues. “David was the one who kind of pushed me and the staff to focus on runs, because they knew that, at the next level, that was what I needed to add to my game. It really helped.”
Cavani was the player PSG coaches urged Weah to study (Aurelien Meunier – PSG/PSG via Getty Images)
Weah’s attacking instincts, both learned and innate, come to the fore in a number of his goals for the national team. He is particularly fond of one he scored away against Jamaica in 2021. When The Athletic points out it is a concise version of that epic his father scored against Verona for the number of players he beats, he doesn’t completely push back.
“It’s like a little short remix of it,” he smiles.
Weah picks up the ball on the left and combines with Ricardo Pepi inside…
…then forces his way through a thicket of defenders…
…and applies the finish.
The half-space on the left is his happy place. Weah, a right-footer, plays his club football on the right flank, but when he inverts, his game elevates. “Whenever I’m coming onto my right… I love it. The majority of my goals are scored with my right,” he says. “On that side of the field, I just have a certain feeling. I think it’s just easier for me to connect with the No 9 or the players that are around me to create opportunities. I had a lot of fun in this game.”
Sentimentally, it was a special goal “against my mother’s country (Clar is Jamaican) and my country as well. My whole childhood was spent in Laurelton and Rosedale (neighbourhoods) in Queens, predominantly a Jamaican community. I went to a Caribbean school in New York, so growing up I always felt like a full Jamaican, a full Yardie, so getting the experience of playing in Kingston against Jamaica was, you know… there was a lot of pride involved. I knew I was not only playing for my country but also against my country, which was a beautiful feeling and to get the goals… I mean, it was fun.”
We move on to his ghosting runs from out to in. Weah recognises the next clip immediately. “This is my first goal, in Philadelphia against Bolivia (for the U.S. senior side in 2018).” Beyond opening his account for the national team as an 18-year-old, what was satisfying about the goal was how fresh Weah and the assist provider, Antonee Robinson, then were to the USMNT setup. “We were brand-new to the team,” Weah recalls. “So our chemistry together was just building at the time.”
“I think what helps me understand him (Robinson) is that at this time I was a forward, but I wasn’t only a forward-thinking player.
“I was a player who was able to play defence if the coach wanted me to, (or) the midfield, so I had a certain connection with the defenders and the outside backs that really helped me get into certain positions.
“Honestly, here it was just like an instinct thing. I see Antonee coming down the line. I’m 100 per cent sure he’s going to play a ball behind the defence. I have to make the right run at the right time and just finish it. I was more focused on not being offside…
“…because I knew once I got a foot on it that the ’keeper wouldn’t stop it, whether it was on the floor or high.”
It’s a goal Weah repeated and perfected on the biggest stage of all. It ranks as the finest moment of his career so far, too. Neco Williams, the Wales and Nottingham Forest full-back, won’t thank him for it. Weah got into his head during the countries’ opening game of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Ten minutes before half-time, Christian Pulisic got on the ball between the lines.
Weah initially shaped to go outside Williams. The move fooled the defender, who took a split second to look to his right. But his man was no longer there.
He had darted inside and Pulisic threaded him through one-on-one with Wayne Hennessey in goal.
“We (Christian and Tim) make it easy for each other,” Weah says. “The connection we have on the field is amazing. I know when Christian does certain movements that I have to do another movement to try to create something. I know, 100 per cent, that when he gets the ball, a lot of defenders are going to be crowding him, so I know that opens up space for me to try to make something happen and create. This goal was a perfect situation. I saw him get the ball and saw a whole bunch of space.
“Running in behind is something I’ve done well my whole life especially; you know, huge thanks to PSG because they really focused on teaching me how to make runs and timing and all these different things. It shows today.”
The finish for that goal with the outside of his right foot was outstanding. “I saw Christian coming,” Weah rewinds and analyses. “I knew I had to make the opposite run, then on the finish, I knew the goalkeeper was going to come out and probably go to the floor, so I knew I had to give him a little chip or a little flick outside the foot to score.”
It makes you wonder why Weah doesn’t go back to his roots and become a striker again. “I’m not your typical No 9 who is going to bang in 15 or 20 goals a season. But I’d love to get to that point. That’s definitely on my bucket list,” he says.
Why hasn’t he yet? Maybe Weah has been too much of a team player. He has always put side before self. “I play everywhere,” Weah winks. It isn’t sarcasm either. He has thrown himself into it, rising to the challenge. “It’s definitely something that I love,” he says. “Obviously as a player, you want to focus on one position and kind of perfect that. But I’m also a player who has fun in different positions. I love seeing the game from the perspective of a different player’s eyes. So playing centre-back (?!), playing right-back… I get a buzz from it. And then doing well in those positions is like the biggest high for me because people are like, ‘Woah, he can play up top, he can play in defence’.”
When Ismaily, the Brazilian full-back, suffered a bad injury during Weah’s time at French club Lille, he put up his hand and volunteered to cover for him. “I would always joke around in training and be like, ‘You know, if you guys need an extra player in this position you know who you can call on’.”
One day, Lille’s coach at the time, Paulo Fonseca, took him up on the offer. “The rest is history,” Weah says. “I played the whole season at right-back, wing-back, and then at the end of the season Juve came calling…. for the same position, which was a surprise to me because it was my first year playing the position. It was kind of crazy.”
Not when you see him using his pace to make tackles on the cover like this one against Empoli, it isn’t.
Watch how alert Weah is to bail out team-mate Federico Gatti for not tracking Matteo Cancellieri’s run. The tackle he puts in is the sort former Juventus captain Giorgio Chiellini would have celebrated as if it were a goal at the other end.
“Awareness levels vary,” Weah says. “It depends on what position you’re playing. When you’re playing striker, I guess you can kind of slack off a little bit more.”
The Athletic jokes that his dad must have had it easy then… “Not necessarily!” Weah lights up. “But I think he had it easier than the centre-backs because I don’t think there is any worse feeling than being the person who is the cause of getting scored on. Last season, what I was really focused on not doing was being the reason we got scored on. I was tuned in, making sure I was on my Ps and Qs and on my tippy-toes when something was going on.”
This year is different. Juventus’ new coach, Thiago Motta, knows Weah. They were briefly team-mates at PSG, men at opposite ends of their playing careers. When Weah made his professional debut as a sub for PSG against Troyes in spring 2018, Motta came off the bench, too. “He was an older player and I was a young kid,” Weah recalls. “So we didn’t really have that much interaction, but he was an amazing player. Going into the first team, he was technically one of the most gifted players at PSG, so to be on the bench and playing with all these great players and watching them do what they did was fun.
“And now to him being my coach, it’s going to be 10 times harder. Because he knows me while he was playing in his career, I’m definitely going to have to work 10 times harder than everyone else to to prove myself. It’s fun at the end of the day. I’m just enjoying every moment.”
Motta and Weah during the game against Empoli this season (Andrea Staccioli/Insidefoto/LightRocket via Getty Images)
One of the reasons it’s so fun is the presence in the Juventus ranks of his USMNT and Juventus team-mate Weston McKennie. Every summer since Weah joined the Turin club from Lille for €13.4million (£11.2m; $14.6m), McKennie has seemed on the brink of leaving.
McKennie came back from his summer holidays in 2023 and no longer had a room at the J Hotel, where Juventus stay before games. His parking space and locker at the Juventus Training Center had been reallocated. The club intended to sell him and yet McKennie fought his way back into Juventus’ plans and into the team. Last year, he alternated with Weah at wing-back after Juventus let Juan Cuadrado go. Now, instead of being viewed as like-for-like players in the same position, they are considered complementary pieces, as they are with the USMNT.
“Honestly, Wes is one of the main reasons why I came here,” Weah says. “I knew he was here and I knew I was going to have one of my best friends on the team here. And off the pitch, I’m always at his house. We’re always chilling, so already we have that type of relationship, and then taking that to the field was amazing, obviously in a different position because when I play with him on the national team, I’m higher up, so we have a different connection, but playing lower and closer to him.
“I mean, if you look at a lot of my games, the majority of my best games are when me and Wes are playing next to each other.”
Take, for instance, the 3-0 win against Uzbekistan in St Louis last year. Pulisic whips in a speculative cross for McKennie. The ball is behind him, but it doesn’t matter.
McKennie turns, reaches out a leg and performs a sombrero while Weah lies in wait.
The move attracts four opposition defenders. Still, McKennie has the poise to offload the ball to Weah.
The pass is just asking to be hit and Weah winds up his right foot and blasts a shot past the goalkeeper.
“Honestly, I think he’s so good at everything,” Weah says of McKennie. “I think he has a tank (physicality) that no one else has. He runs 24/7. He’s one of the highest jumpers I’ve ever seen. He’s scored so many important goals off set pieces. He’s one of those box-to-box players that are just killers and he’s so important to have on a team.
“So having him, having that energy, having his energy, the understanding that we have… our connection is super-solid. And then obviously, when I came here, I didn’t speak Italian, so having him, who can kind of translate for me, was a blessing. And I’m so blessed to have him again this year and hopefully we can get some more trophies together.”
(Daniele Badolato – Juventus FC/Juventus FC via Getty Images)
Motta has restored Weah to his old role as a winger. He even played him as a No 9 in the second half of the goalless draw against Napoli last month. “It’s more positive, more attacking, more keeping the ball,” Weah says of Juventus’ change in style. “I feel like we can definitely score more and that goes for myself, I can definitely score more, but I think we’re doing so well this season.”
Juventus are unbeaten in Serie A after eight games, and have allowed only one goal so far. “If you watch the majority of the games we play, we take no goals, we dominate and score as well. This season is a really fun season. We’re still kind of learning the tactics and feeling out each other, but it’s a lot of young guys who are willing to do the job, so I think this year is going to be fun.”
Weah thinks his team has a chance to win their first Scudetto since 2020. But it’s not going to be easy. This week’s upcoming Derby d’Italia against champions Inter Milan will perhaps give us the best indication yet of their ability to contend. Weah singles out Khephren’s brother, Marcus Thuram, as an early player of the year candidate on their bitter rival’s team. “He’s had an amazing start to the season. Marcus is doing well and I’m proud of him. Obviously he plays for Inter. But we don’t like Inter! But we like Marcus,” he laughs.
Weah started the season well too. He scored on the opening weekend, in a 3-0 win against promoted Como. He had suffered a minor muscle tear in his right leg while defending a corner in the build-up to it. “I was talking to the coach and he’s like, ‘Two minutes! There’s two minutes left, or a minute or so left’. And he was like, ‘Can you hold it out?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, hold it out’.”
In the end, it worked out as Weah was still able to follow the play up the pitch and careen a shot in off the crossbar with his weaker left foot.
That single goal matched his output for the whole of last season, although the improbable screamer he hit in January’s 6-1 win over Salernitana was memorable. When The Athletic points out that shot was exactly the sort that analytics departments discourage players from taking, Weah laughs. The situation’s xG (expected goals figure) never entered his head. “I’ve always been someone who loves shooting from distance,” he says. “Even when I was younger, I used to shoot from afar all the time and I’ve always had a good shot. My parents are always stressing me out. They’re always like, ‘Shoot from afar! You’ve got a good shot. Blah blah blah’. And I’m like, ‘Yeah, you’re right’. So I ended up taking their advice.
His father George wasn’t afraid to take on shots from range either. “I guess that’s where I get it from,” Weah says.
“I’ve always felt comfortable shooting from distance. You just shoot and see what happens. And obviously, sometimes it can end up going high, out of the stadium, but if I take that same shot five times, I’m sure I’m going to score at least two.
“So I think, for me, those are great ratios and I just have to keep testing the ’keeper. I ended up testing the ’keeper there, and he was not ready.”
Attention turns to the national team and the lead-up to the World Cup being co-hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada in 2026. The Copa America in the summer was a debacle, as the USMNT exited at the group stage on home turf. Weah’s early red card for punching an opponent in the group-stage defeat against Panama did not help their cause, and after the tournament the coach Gregg Berhalter lost his job and was replaced by Mauricio Pochettino. He started with a laboured home win against Panama and an away defeat to Mexico in the October internationals.
“I feel like we have so much potential,” says Weah, who missed those recent games through injury. “It’s just about getting the right person to exploit that potential and I think (Pochettino) is definitely someone that can do it. I’m excited.” That’s not a criticism of Berhalter. “For me, he was a top coach as well,” Weah insists. “The national team is like home to me and it is still enjoyable, even as the scrutiny intensifies ahead of the U.S. hosting the World Cup.
(John Dorton/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images for USSF)
“Playing under pressure is kind of the reason why we play the game,” Weah says. “My favourite games are never home games. My favourite games are away games when the stakes are high. So with this World Cup being at home, the stakes are going to be super-high and I think the fans just kind of have to relax and bear with us. Let us work. Let us build that hunger. Let us gel together as a team again.
“Obviously, with a new coach, we’re going to have to rebuild. The relationship we have as a team is something a lot of other teams don’t really have. We understand each other and it’s about taking the understanding that we have as individuals and as a team and applying that to the field. We’re at a point where a lot of the guys that play for the national team are overseas getting the best football.”
Pulisic, for example, is in the form of his life, with five goals and three assists in Milan’s first eight league games of the season. “Yeah, amazing,” Weah says in admiration. “That’s an example of guys coming overseas, doing what they have to do, and then bringing it back to the national team. I think it’s positive for everyone and it benefits everyone. We just have to stay focused, kind of block out the noise, know where we’re going, and be intentional with our process.”
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Kelsea Petersen)
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