Four years after leaving the Union, Mark McKenzie is one of the team’s great success stories

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — Six-and-a-half years ago, Mark McKenzie and Auston Trusty went up for the same header in a Union game.

They were precocious rookie centerbacks back then, battling veteran New York Red Bulls striker Bradley Wright-Phillips. Though they were well-regarded prospects, neither knew all of what was to come, from the Union’s rise in MLS to their own successes.

Nor could they have known on that day in October 2018 that they would not start a senior U.S. national team game together until March 2023.

By the time that moment came, both players had gone a long way. McKenzie was at the first of the two European clubs he has called home: Belgium’s Genk, to where the Union sold him for $6 million after the 2020 season. Trusty was at England’s Birmingham City, his second of four European stops to date.

All of that shows how far they’ve come since they emerged from the Union’s youth academy and jumped right into the deep end. They played 19 games together for the Union, including 18 starts, and a lot of them were in their first year as pros.

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Fast-forward to the present, and the two 26-year-olds are firmly established. McKenzie, of Bear, Del., is a regular with French top flight club Toulouse. Trusty, of Media, Pa., is a regular for Scottish power Celtic of Glasgow — including high-profile games in the Champions League this season.

They’ve also been national team regulars under manager Mauricio Pochettino, even though they’ve only gotten a few minutes together in a game. When they both made the roster for the Concacaf Nations League Final Four, it seemed another chance might come, until Trusty had to withdraw due to a calf injury.

So a chance to do a little reminiscing this week ended up with just McKenzie, instead of both of them. Fortunately, the occasion for the meeting was one that needs no diminishing: the U.S. men’s soccer team’s next-to-last official tournament before next year’s World Cup.

“You look back at those pictures, and it’s just young kids — two teenagers with aspirations and dreams to play at a high level, but [who] know that there’s still a ways to go,” McKenzie said. “You know there’s a lot of work to be put in, a lot of games to be played, in order to showcase yourself, and to really put yourself in the right environment to say, ‘Yeah, I deserve to be here.’”

These days, plenty of people rightly say they deserve to be here.

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“You flash forward to where we are now, playing at some of the highest levels in the world,” McKenzie continued, “and I think that is a testament to who we are as individuals, but also to the work we put in as competitors, and getting to this point of putting ourselves in this position. So yeah, it’s surreal to look at those pictures and see two baby-faced teenagers going up to win an aerial duel in an MLS game.”

Out of the five players with Union ties on this month’s 23-man U.S. squad, McKenzie represents a sort of middle generation of alumni.

Christian Pulisic (yes, really), Brian White, and Downingtown native Zack Steffen played for Union youth teams in 2012, a year before the club launched its renowned academy. Jack McGlynn made his first-team debut the season after McKenzie’s time at Subaru Park ended with the 2020 Supporters’ Shield.

Cavan Sullivan’s arrival marks the start of another era, one that will run until his departure to England’s Manchester City at the end of 2027. The hype over the 15-year-old has gone worldwide, including to the foot of the Pyrenées mountains in southwestern France.

“You see a kid who’s kind of plastered all over adidas advertisements, and MLS is pushing his face and his brand over everything,” McKenzie said, “So naturally, guys are like, ‘Who is this kid? And he’s signed with Man City, when he turns 18 he’s going?’”

» READ MORE: Former Union midfielder Jack McGlynn joined the USMNT’s Nations League squad as an injury replacement

Here, McKenzie showed the side of himself that has always had an old head on its shoulders.

“I say, the kid, he’s a normal kid who’s got aspirations to play at the highest level,” he says. “He’s got an opportunity now to play at one of the best clubs in the world. Time will be the biggest indicator of how far he goes, and ultimately his mentality, his hunger, his drive to play, I think that will be the biggest thing that tells — but he’s got all the tools to be able to do it.”

Toulouse is treating McKenzie well, and vice versa. It’s one of France’s most picturesque cities — nicknamed La Ville Rose, the Rose City, for its pink-walled buildings. Though the city’s soccer team has never won a French league title, its fan base is one of the nation’s most fervent. Famous former players include Fabien Barthez, the star goalkeeper of France’s 1998 World Cup champions.

“You feel the energy, because it’s also a big university city — you’ve got a lot of youth walking throughout the center,” McKenzie said. “We’ve got Stade Toulousain, which is probably the best rugby team in the world [23-time French champions and six-time European champions]. We’ve got Toulouse Football Club, which has a big following.”

McKenzie called his team “kind of the perfect landing spot in terms of the next step in my career and what I wanted,” after 3 ½ years at Genk. Toulouse paid $3.2 million to buy him last August.

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“Somewhere I would be able to come in and compete for regular minutes,” he said. “Somewhere I’ll be able to compete to achieve a European ticket. Somewhere I’ll be able to play against the best players in the world, play in a system that suits me, and that also challenges me in different ways.”

Toulouse has checked almost all the boxes. McKenzie has played 28 games this season, starting almost all of them, and the club is 10th in Ligue 1 this season. Though the club likely won’t qualify for continental tournaments this season, a 10th-place finish would be the club’s best in 11 years, and set the stage for further improvement next season.

The French league isn’t as highly regarded as the biggest European circuits in England, Spain, Italy, and Germany. Only star-studded Paris Saint-Germain truly competes at the continent’s top level. But Ligue 1 is renowned as an elite foundry of young talents, and McKenzie sees that every week.

“When you play against them, you see their hunger, their drive, their creativity, their flair, their confidence,” he said. “To be able to kind of shut them down and put them in their place at times is fulfilling as a defender. But also, to be able to go up against some of the best individual talents that I probably have ever played against is also special, and challenges me regularly.”

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If McKenzie continues playing at this high a level, an opportunity will eventually come to move to an even higher-level club. But right now, his focus is on the national team, and not just this week.

He knows the World Cup is coming, and that he fell just short of making the 2022 squad. If the 2026 tournament was tomorrow, he’d be in, and he’s determined to keep it that way.

“It’s the biggest sporting spectacle in the world, I’ll call it — because that’s how I truly feel — and not something everybody gets to do and be a part of,” he said. “I was disappointed to not be a part of that 2022 team, and I’ve kept it as motivation in my back pocket from the time that I got the call that I wasn’t going to be on that roster. I said I would do everything I can to make sure things were a bit different this time.”