Ricardo Pepi is continuing to garner European interest and Bundesliga club Wolfsburg has reportedly joined the race for his signature.
Wolfsburg has joined Eredivisie side Ajax and Italian Serie A club Genoa in the race for Pepi, German outlets Bild and Wolfsburger Nachrichten reported Tuesday. Pepi’s stellar rise as one of the top young attacking talents in both MLS and the U.S. men’s national team pool has led to a growing amount of interest in the young striker.
The 18-year-old is in the midst of a breakout season with FC Dallas, registering 13 goals so far, the most of any American player in MLS. He also scored the game-winning penalty kick in this year’s MLS All-Star Game, helping the MLS All-Stars defeat their Liga MX counterparts.
Pepi made headlines when he formally announced his decision to play for the United States rather than Mexico, a decision that cleared the way for Pepi to earn his first USMNT call-up in September.
Pepi’s international debut was one for the ages, as he scored a goal and helped set up three others in a 4-1 comeback win over Honduras in Concacaf World Cup qualifying in September.
The growing interest from clubs like Wolfsburg has Pepi looking like the next candidate to make the jump from FC Dallas to Europe, a path taken by Weston McKennie, Chris Richards, Tanner Tessmann, and Reggie Cannon.
Pepi is currently with the USMNT ahead of its three-match October World Cup Qualifying schedule, which begins on Thursday in Austin, Texas against Jamaica.
Don’t know much about Wolfsburg but aren’t they known for not playing their young players?
not a fan of wolfsburg…almost any where but there type feelings…hopefully he the other teams want him more and outbid wolfsburg
doesn’t bayern have rights of first refusal on everyone there?
i also think after horvath and sargent’s moves we have the umpteenth reminder the kids might do well to consider the likelihood of starting there and not just the fee, salary, prestige of address. horvath climbed through a mile of career muck, came out clean this summer against mexico, signed with notts forest and right back into “sorry, left you off the roster this time.” i got grief at the time for pointing out they had a solid starting keeper already and were probably replacing the second string who left. but it’s England! might as well be back in belgium for all the good this has done him. anyways, pick your destinations wisely, set yourself up for success.
No they do not.
It’s a talent development deal, Bayern trains a center number of players during the offseason usually and I think coaches go over there and maybe some Bayern people come over to train players here at times. Now if a player goes on loan to Bayern after their training period, it might be in those individual loan deals. Pepi has never been loaned to Bayern so they have no rights to him.
Eh- their starting keeper is pretty rubbish. Unfortunately- so is their manager… and Horvath bungled his opportunity when it came. There will be more.
as i understood it their manager got fired. so they may have been tanking to get him fired. and that also makes horvath an orphan in terms of who brought him in. anyways, he was brought in to replace the exiting backup on a team that had a decent GA relative to table position. like they were the only team outside the top 5 or so with that few goals allowed. his agent could have picked dozens of other teams and picked a decent defense with an existing starting keeper. he will have his chance but “he can compete for the job” is true of every keeper everywhere drawing a paycheck. when you had a choice where you ended up, and might be committed for years, bad deal. he’d finally overcome his club situation this summer and used the momentum to put himself in another. and the coach then promptly stuck him off in the wilderness again. do they learn.
Not knowing truly what offers he had that’s hard to say. We heard rumors of interest but rumors during transfer windows are not always true. It may very well be that Nottingham Forest was the best opportunity he had.
Ideally:
1) a club willing to develop and play young players
2) a stable management and tenured coach
3) not in a relegation fight
Even Haaland has taken a very measured approach. Instead of jumping on the first offer from the big guns, went to Salzburg and then Dortmund first and got to play all the time and become even better.
Would be a terrible move for him. They do not have a culture of playing young players there. It’s not about the biggest club for Pepi at this point. He needs to show he can adjust to the European game and be productive. Playing time and patience from his club will be the most important thing.
But of course Wolfsburg. Because German scouts like nothing more than taking talent from FC Dallas, it’s an absolute fetish with them. You KNEW the Bundesliga was going to come calling for Pepi at some point, that was inevitable. Law of nature, almost.
At least they’re going to have to pay Dallas for this one.
Here’s to hoping this coming week makes that race much faster!