Luca De La Torre excelled for Dutch club Heracles Almelo during the past two Eredivisie seasons, but is now on the move to one of Europe’s top five leagues.
Celta Vigo has acquired De La Torre on a permanent transfer from Heracles Almelo, the La Liga club announced Friday. The U.S. men’s national team midfielder signed a four-year contract with Celta Vigo and is the third summer-signing made by the club.
De La Torre, 24, logged 34 league appearances this past season, scoring one goal and registering one assist. He featured heavily from his central midfield position, finishing with a career-high in appearances.
A former Fulham academy product, De La Torre joined Heracles in 2020 after totaling only seven appearances for Fulham’s first team squad. De La Torre logged 64 appearances for Heracles between his two seasons there, which helped him force a return to the USMNT squad during World Cup Qualifying.
After earning only four caps between 2018-2021, De La Torre earned seven caps in 2022, helping Gregg Berhalter’s side clinch qualification into the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
Celta Vigo finished in 11th place in La Liga last season and is managed by former MLS player Eduardo Coudet. The Spanish club’s competitive schedule kicks off on August 13 against Espanyol.
i think he’s overrated here and about to be over his head there. if someone plays you as often as GB does with our talent you should by pure luck trip over a goal or assist once in a while. i think there is limited value in a two way player of limited productivity who is somewhat soft in the contact part of the game — i think he just left the one league so far where his schtick fit and worked. i also don’t buy the implication of some posters that la liga is a touch football league like holland, outside of barca and a couple others. actually england — where i feel like soft positional zone is in vogue — is where the scoring is more free and lopsided. there are quite a few teams, both big madrilenos, the basque sides, built around team defense actually. the tiki taka stereotype is only true of barca up top and as one descends the pyramid. kind of like one might expect to see kickball in the lower divisions in england and scotland.
He’s got as many goals for the USA as Musah, and one less than Adams. In far fewer appearances.
IV – LDT was a significant contributor in qualifying and was directly involved in something like 6 goals with at least one direct assist that I can remember. He was also good in the June window with the exception of Uruguay where he was specifically brought in to kill off the game amd got pushed off the ball and committed a stupid foul that gave Uruguay a very dangerous free kick late. If you think he is so bad, who do you think is better in the US pool? McKennie is. Musah – maybe, but he has contributed to far fewer goals in much more game time. Adams, maybe; probably would have said so before June window but Adams was pretty bad the whole wimdow IMO.
Most of what you wrote has little to do with Luca.
“i think heโs overrated here”
That goes for the entire USMNT players and staff.
They have played nothing but cupcake crap teams all this time they’re all learning on the job.
So the proof pudding will be the Wales game.
Celta spent 2 million on LDLT. That’s. development money. Part of the low price is because Heracles being relegated meant Celta could lowball them.
Still Vigo are reported to be very high on him
He’s got a lot of competition for playing time. But this should be a good place for him to work on his development and LDLT while promising, has a lot to work on.
It’s a good sink or swim type move.
Plain and simply- he is quite a bit better than a few of the unremarkable options he helped displace. Having a capable, technical option off the bench that can advance the ball, dribble out of trouble and hit nice through balls is….. good for the team.
La Liga is a good fit. The speed of play and tactics align with his skill set so he won’t have to adjust too much. It’ll still be a step up in competition so he’ll have to perform, but he’s going to a mid-table club so he should have every opportunity to integrate himself.
As much as I like the USMNT’s MMA midfield, I often worry that McKennie & Musah are too similar in style. Especially when we face someone who bunkers & counters. It’s why I’ve wanted to see someone with more passing capabilities (Luca or Reyna) partner with McKennie/Musah at the 8 position….But that’s never really been something Gregg has been willing to try (to this point).
Donโt slouch on McKennie passing ability. I think he is sneaky good at that and itโs just not talked about enough. I get what you are saying though. When LDLT dribbles it looks like the ball is glued to his foot (Messi like). Itโs really a great problem to have this many talented attacking options. The depth is so good right now and they are all young. And the scary, and even better part, there are tons of younger youth National team players on the verge of breaking through too in the next 2-4 years. If the USA keeps this level of development up. 2026 on home soil could be special. But even then, I think we could win a World Cup in the next 10-20 years.
Too many good attacking options? All I am thinking about is the absence of a lock 9 for this cycle and the challenges thatโll face getting out of the group because of that.
We are going to have to rely on our wingers and mids to put the ball into the back of the net to progress.
“And the scary, and even better part, there are tons of younger youth”
scary???
Sargent, Soto, Weah all were “scary” looking when they were at the Youth level.
How scary are those guys now?
The best of them is Timo who is perenially injured and something of a part time player for a middlng Lige 1 side.
What about the FC Dallas bunch?
Richards, Reynolds, Pepi, Ferreira?
Richards was supposed to fill that CB hole at Bayern. Whats up with that? Reynolds? Pepi, the latest young USMNT savior? Ferreira, the new Wondo?
They “could” all turn out very good but they don’t look very scary at the moment.
Everyone is getting way ahead of themselves with this idea that the USMNT has more scary young players than they know what to do with.
When you compare todays USMNT kids with USMNT players 5-10 years ago, things look great.
But our kids won’t be playing the USMNT circa 2010 -2014 in the World Cup.
They’ll be playing teams like England Argentina, Portugal, France, etc. Those are the teams we should be comparing our “scary” kids to if we want to consider ourselves serious World Cup winning contenders.
And so far , while there are a lot of good players, this “scary” wave of talent has one legit international level “star”, Pulisic . And there are questions about him.
Gio, if he can get on the field, potentially is also in that class.
That’s it. Everyone else is a question mark.
Will be interesting to see how he fits in. The thing about Luca is that he can play every midfield position from wing to the six.
I like the move.
Very much agree. I think it’s the right level and the right league. If there was a gulf between him, McKennie, Musah, Pulisic, etc…I didn’t really see it. He did some things better than any of them. Dude is pure quality, all he really lacked was team pedigree and that was obviously coming.
That’s great! He has been the biggest low-key revelation for the USMNT this year: always pushes the ball forward, and very direct.
Moving to a big league is an awesome and ambitious move. Congrats man
Will he play regularly there?
I think so. He fits La Liga really well…obviously he speaks the language, but his style is very much the La Liga style…precise, technical, played by not overly big or physical dudes and the refs tend to be a little quicker on their whistles than they are in Germany or England so he’s not going to be erased by incessant hacking the way I suspect he was at Fulham, where he never really emerged.
His versatility in the midfield and his quality on the ball mean he’ll get minutes, IMHO. It’s hard to see that many squads even in La Liga having three guys better than him. I personally have him ahead of Tyler Adams, who IMHO is very much a quality player, and it’s a coin flip for me between him and McKennie.