Prodigies

American teenager Weston McKennie entered a friendly match for Schalke against Genk at halftime on Sunday. That’s completely normal — the midfielder made 14 Bundesliga appearances in the first half of league play. What was abnormal was the position McKennie played for the entirety of the second half: center back. 

McKennie, 19, replaced 35-year-old Brazilian Naldo at the heart of Schalke’s three-man defense. And although Genk scored a late consolation, McKennie impressed in a 2-1 victory for the Germans over the Belgians in Spain. 

17-year-old Missouri native Josh Sargent made his Werder Bremen debut on Tuesday while appearing for the club’s U-23 team in a friendly versus Dynamo Dresden. Sargent officially joined the club on Jan. 1 and won’t be able to sign a professional contract until turning 18 on February 20, but the eagle has landed.

As first reported by Univision and subsequently confirmed by ESPN FC and the Washington Post’s Steven Goff, 18-year-old Monterrey midfielder Jonathan Gonzalez, having represented the United States at the U-17, U-18 and U-20 levels, will request a one-time switch of allegiance from FI

It’s an old trope of film that always gets the job done effectively and, more importantly, concisely: the training montage. Films like the Rocky franchise, The Karate Kid, X-Men: First Class, The Fighter, Cool Runnings, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Hunger Games and you get the point have all utilized the uplifting sequence to quickly portray a long passage of time devoted to painstaking preparation.

When FC Barcelona signed 12-year-old prospect Cristobal Munoz from a youth side affiliated with Malaga last March, the deal was heralded by Barcelona-based daily Sport as the capture of “the hottest young prospect in Spanish football.”

Just when you think Kylian Mbappe’s personal brand couldn’t get any doper — what, with him providing us with the second coming of O Fenômeno — he goes and says something like this.

Récord, a Mexican daily sports newspaper, has named 18-year-old American midfielder Jonathan Gonzalez in its Torneo Apertura Best XI following a sensational breakthrough season for the California native at Monterrey.

After signing with Monterrey in 2014, Gonzalez advanced through the youth ranks before becoming a mainstay in the heart of Los Rayados’ midfield throughout the 2017 Apertura season. Monterrey finished at the top of the table in the regular season before losing in the final to Tigres.

Jonathan Klinsmann, the 20-year-old son of former USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann, made his Hertha Berlin debut, starting for the German side against Ostersunds FK of Sweden in the Europa League on Thursday. The Jonathan Klinsmann debut was highlighted by a save of a late penalty kick to preserve a 1-1 draw for Hertha.