Charlotte FC’s McKinze Gaines sees position competition as positive: ‘Iron sharpens iron’
McKinze Gaines was a Charlotte FC expansion draft pick scooped up from Austin FC before the 2022 Major League Soccer season.
Gaines, a 24-year-old Austin native, moved from one expansion team to another upon joining Charlotte FC as a winger. He has appeared in seven league matches for Charlotte FC this season, often earning minutes as a late-game substitute.
With the midseason arrival of forwards Kamil Jóźwiak from English side Derby County and Andre Shinyashiki from the Colorado Rapids, as well as the planned arrival of Kerwin Vargas from Portuguese club Feirense, Gaines has more competition on the front line, but he said that he’s looking at the growing squad as a positive.
“‘Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another,’” Gaines said, quoting a proverb he said that he heard earlier in his career. “And I think you could definitely apply that to the new additions to the team.”
Gaines spoke with The Charlotte Observer ahead of Charlotte FC’s match against Inter Miami (3:30 p.m. Saturday) about his role on the team, expansion club “growing pains” and his favorite movies.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Alex Andrejev: How do you think the team is looking this week and feeling about being back home after a long away stretch?
McKinze Gaines: Obviously, it didn’t really go on the road like we wanted it to go. We didn’t get as many points as we wanted, but that’s kind of the league. It’s a league where it’s difficult to get points away from home. You try to steal a few here and there. We got one in Colorado, which was nice. We wanted some in Orlando and unfortunately couldn’t get them, but we’re back at home where we’ve been really, really good recently so hopefully we can earn the points here that we didn’t get on the road.
AA: Andre joined training this week. Kamil is here. How has it been having more forwards to play with and work with? How do you see your role on the team?
MG: It’s been nice. There’s a quote that I heard earlier in my career that’s like, “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another,” and I think you could definitely apply that to the new additions to the team. We have a deeper roster now than we did at the beginning of the season, and it’s always nice to be able to compare yourself, not only to trainings prior, but also to other players in training and I think that’s what I’ve been able to do recently with Kamil, with Andre. They strengthen the team and they add competition, and it’s only gonna get the best out of myself and out of them, so I’m looking forward to advancing and playing with them in the future.
AA: You’ve played with an expansion club before Charlotte, so now that we’re 10 games into this season, how’s the experience been? What have you noticed about this club (versus Austin)?
MG: I think that there were similar growing pains with both clubs, here a little bit moreso. I think the absence of a real training facility is something that we’ve all had to get used to, busing to and from Matthews (Sportsplex) every day. But there are growing pains that come with coming into the league, I think. You see where Austin is this year compared to last year, they’ve definitely learned from them. And I think this team is actually learning from our mistakes and earlier experiences faster than we did in Austin last season. I think that we have more points at this point in the season (10) than Austin did last season at this point (nine), and we’re definitely a higher place in the standings than Austin was last year. So I think that we’ve definitely come into the league and shown that we can play with anybody, and we kind of signaled our intent. We’ve shown that, ‘Hey, we can play with the big boys in the league and we want to be competing for playoffs.’ I think we’ve done really well and obviously the goal is just to continue what we’ve been doing this season.
AA: When you talk about learning from mistakes, what are those? Are there specific moments that come to mind that you’ve talked about with the team or others?
MG: Yeah, I mean here and there. Nothing that I really want to touch on in depth, but obviously there are certain moments in the game where you don’t do things the way they should be done, obviously myself and the team included, but it’s all about learning from your mistakes and hopefully rectifying those as the season goes on.
AA: What else should fans know about you? Any fun facts?
MG: I don’t know if I have a fun fact about myself.
AA: Current Netflix show? Favorite movie?
MG: I like ‘Inception.’ ‘Pursuit of Happyness’ is up there. ‘The Wolf of Wall Street.’ I don’t know if you’ve heard of ‘Peaky Blinders’ on Netflix, but definitely up there in terms of all-time favorite series. ‘Game of Thrones,’ until the last season.
AA: Are you a Marvel movie fan at all? “Doctor Strange (2)“ is out this week.
MG: So my girlfriend is a huge Marvel movie fan. She’s trying to get me into it. I think they’re cool. I’m not a die-hard fan, but they’re good movies. ... She’s trying to get me to watch them in order for the storylines, so I’ve watched the first three in order and it’s cool how they interconnect, and then I saw the Spider Man movie recently, which was cool, but I definitely have a lot more films to watch.
This story was originally published May 6, 2022 at 6:46 AM.
