Dutch Eredivisie champions PSV officially has all three U.S. men’s national team players back at its disposal for the foreseeable future.
Sergino Dest has joined PSV in a permanent deal from Barcelona, both clubs announced Saturday. Dest, who suffered a serious knee injury earlier this year, signed a four-year contract with the reigning Eredivisie champs.
“To begin with, PSV believes in me and I am greatly appreciated here,” Dest said. “I got to know the club as very warm, as I have never experienced anywhere. Those are important aspects for someone in my situation and give me confidence that I can rehabilitate well here. Once it’s that far, it’s very nice that the game we’re playing here suits me. I’m really looking forward to making minutes again, being important and grabbing titles.”
The 23-year-old spent all of last season in Eindhoven, scoring two goals and adding seven assists in 37 combined appearances for PSV. Alongside international teammates Malik Tillman and Ricardo Pepi, Dest helped PSV win the league title last season and reach the UEFA Champions League Round of 16.
Dest’s Barcelona contract was set to expire in June 2025. He made 72 combined appearances for the La Liga giants, scoring three goals and adding four assists. Dest also spent time at AC Milan on loan while under contract at Barcelona.
Dest’s torn ACL in April forced him to miss the USMNT’s involvement in the ongoing 2024 Copa America.
He is expected to make his return to competitive action in early 2025.
PSV obviously had good reason to want Dest badly, the real issue was price. And that price took a major hit when he tore up his knee because it meant other suitors weren’t going to come swooping in for him.
PSV wanted him back and Barca needed him off the books, so this always seemed likely to happen.
Barca is known for setting their buyout clauses very high so that they can then negotiate it for a realistic price. Saves them if someone has a big year on loan they haven’t undervalued them. Given the knee injury even if was a reasonable number originally was probably too high for PSV with the added risk involved.
yeah, ironically it probably helped as 10-20m is pushing or even beyond what dutch teams like to spend. dutch teams are mostly selling teams.
On a new note concerning our USMNT and transfers: Juventus just acquired Brazilian midfielder Douglas Luiz from Aston Villa.
The Guardian reports that Villa are signing a forward from Juve and Villa are looking to sign 2 other midfielders – neither of which are named Weston McKennie.
I wonder what this means for Weston at Juve.
probably still gone just not to villa
Juve and Villa had reportedly agreed that Wes would be part of the deal but Wes’s people couldn’t come to an agreement with Juve on his exit. He’s likely to move just not to Villa.
does this make any normal sense? isn’t transfer fee percentage usually spelled out ahead of time? i already have a contract with x. that usually says i get 15% or so if you sell me on. why am i needing to negotiate with x to transfer to y? usually it’s transfer fee from y then personal terms at y.
sketchy, kind of sounds like an excuse to bait and switch mckennie back out of the deal and sell him for more to someone else, while juve gets the player it originally wanted from villa.
IV: it does seem weird, unless maybe since it was a swap of several players perhaps Wes’s people were trying to argue the valuation of Wes was too low so they wanted additional money added on to the percentage.
Happy for Dest. It gets him out of a club that didn’t want him and provides security for him to rehab with a club (and players) he’s familiar with and want him.
Now he needs to put in the work to get fully healthy so he doesn’t become another of a long list of US Players who’ve had their careers ended due to knee problems.
sorry but o’brien and holden were not lazy. it’s a crapshoot on do you have arthritis or infection or some other issue other side. some aspects might be work ethic but some might be who is your surgeon and do you have no complications and not too much existing wear and tear.
IV –
I wasn’t implying that O’Brien & Holden were lazy. Just stating that Dest needs to put in the work to return to “Full” health as many players rush their recoveries and end up re-injured.
LIS — it’s kind of about what’s meant by “put in the work.” i guess you’re saying normal rehab. fine. i just kind of feel like there is a fanboy element of US followers that thinks that every transfer failure or career blip is a result of insufficient player work ethic, as opposed to incompatibility, greed, etc. that’s the reason i am always jabbering about calibrate your choices is i think success starts with choices. you make bad choices no amount of work fixes it. or, you go to some loaded team, you could be top of your game and end up benched. reyna is a classic one where dortmund never publicly criticizes him and is good enough they were just UCL runner up, but lack of playing time has to reflect on reyna somehow.
but anyhow, fair enough. i just think based on their CV histories if this team sucks the odds favor it’s the guy who’s been hammarby mediocre and columbus one good year, is the problem, over the professionalism and quality of players sprinkled across europe including several good clubs. basic occam’s razor stuff. at minimum, even if not quite what hoped, their locations suggest promise the player critics ignore. someone out there thinks the players are better than the coach. when GB gets canned i don’t see him moving on to coach korea or EPL or anything more than concacaf or MLS again.
This is very interesting from an economic standpoint. Barca has well known and long term economic issues – dating back to Messi’s salary. This has led them to give up or pledge future television right payments. I think that Dest was earning $1.3 Mil Euro annually – saw a whole bunch of numbers but I can’t convert Euro-pound-dollar.
PSV had an option to make Dest’s loan a permanent transfer for 11 Mil Euro. PSV had not exercised that option prior to Dest’s knee injury, and clearly was not going to pay that much for an injured player. Early 2025 return is 1/2 toa a full season out of commission.
So, now PSV takes him on a free. I guess Barca avoids paying Dest’s contract salary and for his rehab as a player that really wasn’t apparently in Barca’s future plans. PSV gets the right to pay Dest through and for his rehab without a sizeable purchase fee. I wonder if clubs have insurance to pay for injured players. I know in the US individual players can buy injury insurance (essentially disability insurance that any of us can buy) in case they get hurt.
Bottom line – lets hope Dest makes a good recovery and can get back on the field as soon as possible in 2025.
Capology says his salary last year was 6 million and for 24/25 was to be 3 million. I don’t know how much PSV shared that with Barca, but taking him off the books will help.
I would expect Dest to be on the field for PSV by January or February of 25. Now he has stability. Which is great. Earliest I could see him is maybe November if his rehab is progressing ahead of time.
holland is a good fit for an attacking wingback who is defense shy, and it probably helps a little working for stewart. i also agree that with a balky knee under rehab a friendly home paying a contract is wise.
i think NBA makes its teams insure their best x number players. i think other US leagues it’s cost-benefit. i’d assume europe is similar. i think it’s often % of contract and not full cost but presumably that’s a matter of money, how much do i want to spend, how much do i want covered, how much risk am i willing to take.
one quirk in the US is a player hurt playing could also ask for worker’s comp and the team might insure themselves not just for contract cost but also worker’s comp costs. this is why you may hear hurt NFL guys released with an “injury settlement.”
side comment but if barca is broke and lucky to make salary are they buying insurance?
response to IV’s last side comment only:
Insurance to cover a risk like paying the salary of an injured player has already been acquired. The question is whether the team/business wants to make a claim on the policy. An insurance company isn’t going to sell you coverage if you already have a loss.
This insurance seems to me to be a business expenses, and that any business has to include that cost as a regular expense.
MWR i get what you’re saying. you have to get insurance and pay your premiums before dest hurts himself, to make a claim and get your check after. but at barca it’s been a fire sale in recent years. my question is does a broke soccer team that sounded like it had financial fair play issues (losing money) have the money to pay debt service, players and staff, and then also have insurance?
among other things, dest, while pretty good, wouldn’t have been one of their biggest players or biggest contracts. nor is his absence likely to drive away fans and hit the bottom line in the way insurance is designed to address. the idea on insurance is if x gets hurt i lose money somehow. messi gets hurt and miami sells fewer tickets, so to speak.
nah, dest’s insurable value would be less his immediate box office value — minimal — it would be ironically his value as a transferable asset. the scenario right now.
but the deal is also that they have financial fair play issues where they lose money and so while ideally they would make a buck off asset value, offloading salary at any price might take precedence. that and like i said, can they even afford premiums. sometimes it helps to be able to spend money to make money. it stinks but poor folks are often uninsured and so when something bad hits they take the hit every time.
who knows, i’m just saying if barca doesn’t pay the banks and make payroll they have worse problems than if dest isn’t insured.
i think a lot of adoring US fans have goofy ideas on european club finances and solvency. some of their teams are fine. some are a financial mess. some don’t pay on time. puebla a few years back wasn’t paying beasley.
I don’t think the unique business operations in soccer are limited to Mexico. But you are right – Beasely and others (I think Herc Gomez) have talked about not getting paid for a couple weeks and then getting garbage bags full of cash.
Recently, there were claims that Mbappe wasn’t been paid by PSG. I recall lots of Italian players went without comp during COVID, and then maybe as an after thought said “we will forgo” so the reank and file could be paid.
I think it was Reggie Cannon who left his club in Portugal partially because of failure to pay wages. I am always amazed at stories about the sneaky operations of what should be big clubs with modern business operations.
So it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that Barca took short cuts. I don’t think that really is a reason for the Dest sale. I think the Dest transfer was clearly to get a player off the payroll, and Barca couldn’t get any transfer value for him with a serious knee knock.