Leeds United boss Jesse Marsch says it's a coup for the club to sign Weston McKennie from Italian giants Juventus. The Whites boss says he did extensive background checks on the new arrival prior to signing him in the January transfer window.
Marsch says he spoke with former coaches, team-mats and those close to him to see if he was the right fit for Leeds United. The United States international was the third arrival in the January transfer window and is in line to make his Whites' debut against Nottingham Forest this weekend.
Speaking at his press conference earlier this week, Marsch said: "First, I obviously knew of Weston and we had met as acquaintances a couple of times but it's not like we really knew each other. When Weston's name is discussed in the precipice in the idea of having him here, I always want to do homework and certainly part of that homework is talking to people who know him, who are close to him and have played with him, or coached him.
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"Then there's also the conversation or conversations that you have with the player. What I saw from Weston right away, what I heard, was a great guy, great team-mate, a competitor, confident.
"Then when I spoke to him, what I learned was hungry - a desire to improve, the belief that he's done well in his career but he has so much more to achieve and so much more to learn. So, when I combined watching him over the years, the people that I know, that know him and then the conversations that we had - for me it was a no-brainer.
"It was a no-brainer and it's a transfer that we should be proud of as Leeds United to make. Bringing in a player like him from Juventus to a club - listen we want to grow our stature - but where we are right now, I think it's a big get and he's going to help us a lot."
When asked if there was scope for further American additions, Marsch said: "It's funny that it's worked out this way. Six months ago I wouldn't have thought Weston McKennie would be an option or even necessarily the right fit, but given where we were, we thought he was the perfect guy.
"He was always on our list but we thought we had an opportunity and then we thought it was the right time for the right fit. I've talked about this before, Victor does a really good job of scouting and having lists and rankings of players that can fit where we're going and he tries to understand what the manager expects from his teams and how to supplement the right kind of people within the squad to achieve what he wants to achieve.
"He did this with Marcelo [Bielsa] as well right? I think Victor is really open to that and almost finds himself a servant to the needs of the manager, the team and the club.
"I'm very thankful to have someone like that and we have a lot of good discussions, but like I said, there's never really any arguments because we're pretty aligned in almost every way. So, I don't know, he has a lot of contacts, I have a lot of contacts.
"When we start putting it all together we just think about which are the right players to help us for where we are in the moment. I think how we work together has been fantastic."
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