Jump to content

Non-Chelsea Transfer Pub


Hamilton
 Share

Recommended Posts

Sergino Dest: The story of the American right-back who got his Barca dream move

https://theathletic.com/2107987/2020/10/01/sergino-dest-barcelona-koeman/

sergino-dest-barcelona-koeman.jpg

“Sergino Dest is a strange story — a really, really great talent, but also a really, really special person in how he looks at the world,” Gery Vink tells The Athletic.

Vink was a coach in the Ajax youth system Dest joined when he came to the Amsterdam club from neighbours Almere in summer 2012. He immediately learned the new kid was different.

“Every day was something different with Sergino, something at school, in the dressing room, on the pitch,” says Vink, now assistant head coach at another Dutch team, Willem II. “He wanted to be different than his teammates. He was an introvert, shy, a strange boy at that age. There were no serious incidents, but if everyone was wearing a white shirt, he had to wear a different colour. Those types of incidents were always happening. Or he would just not go to school. Can you imagine? He forgot to go to school. But that is Sergino. And I am proud of him, first that he got to the first team. I enjoyed watching him there. And now I am really proud of him going to Barcelona.”

Dest signed a five-year contract at Barca on Thursday after they agreed a €21 million deal with Ajax (plus €5 million in extras).

Former Ajax player and general manager David Endt was equally delighted to see his former pupil at the Spanish giants. Endt watched closely as Dest established himself in the youth ranks at the Amsterdam club, and got to know his family when he briefly worked at an agency which represented the then-teenager.

“Sergino was very small but he was a sturdy guy,” Endt tells The Athletic. “He was an interesting footballer, who liked to play up front as a striker. He was always full of energy, quite skilful, but no one had any idea he would develop so quickly into a very good player. On the pitch he did his thing, but natural talents don’t always have an eye for the complete view, the tactical aspects of a team. He did it out of intuition. But you could see his natural quality, and his potential.”

The coaches at Ajax’s “De Toekomst” (The Future) academy had difficulty in categorizing and understanding Dest’s natural talent. He played for a while in midfield, and on the wing, before settling as a right-back. Vink trained him at the U-17 level in 2016-17, with ex-Netherlands and Chelsea defender Winston Bogarde as his assistant.

“Sergino was very talented, but he found it difficult when he had to think about tactical things,” he says. “He had a lot of talent, he was fast, very good both feet, and very good in attack. But mentality is also a talent, and his coaches had a lot of problems with his attitude, his behaviour. He was special. I had a lot of talks with him, and a lot of fights and discussions about what is needed to get to the top, to be a star. Sometimes he said no, just that — ‘I won’t do it. No, I don’t like it, I won’t do it’.”

“It was difficult,” adds Vink with a laugh. “He cost me a lot of positive energy. But maybe now he has learned from those periods, from those years, and become the player he now is.”


It was around this time that he first came onto the United States Soccer Federation’s radar.

Former United States youth national team coach Dave van den Bergh, a native of Amsterdam and a product of the Ajax academy, called his former club to ask about another American in the ranks there. During the conversation, he asked if there were any other Americans they knew about.

“They said, ‘Actually, we have another player here with an American passport’,” Van den Bergh recalls. “(Scouting) is a little bit of luck.”

Van den Bergh watched film of Dest and saw a converted winger with attacking and technical skill, incredible sprinting ability, solid 1-v-1 defending and room still to grow into the position tactically. He called Dest and found him to be extremely receptive to the idea of joining the U.S. Under-17s.

“I was the first one to call him from any national team, so that helped,” Van den Bergh says. “I don’t think he was on the radar for Holland at that point at all, and so he was immediately enthusiastic about the option and the opportunity to come here.”

Former U.S. U-17 coach John Hackworth remembers the first few camps integrating Dest into an American squad that was made up mostly of teammates who played together at the U.S. Under-17 residency academy in Bradenton, Florida. It was not an easy task introducing players from outside that group into the squad, but Dest’s quality was evident from the first few training sessions. And it was apparent that he took something important out of his time with the group.

In one session, Hackworth took the team on a regeneration run up through the mountains in Georgia, to a waterfall called Sliding Rock, where they could slide into ice cold water.

“You could see in his eyes, it was remarkable for Sergino,” Hackworth recalls. “My wife was taking pictures and Sergino wanted more pictures and more pictures because he loved it. It was almost like he was enlightened coming into that group finding his American roots and enjoying some of the cultural aspects.”

Just two years after featuring in the U-17 World Cup under Hackworth, Dest faced a decision between representing the U.S. and the Netherlands.

As U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter and federation sporting director Earnie Stewart sat in a restaurant with Dest and his father in Amsterdam last year, the goal was to show Dest that he was to play a key role in the U.S. team’s future.

“It was important just to lay out our plans and lay out where we were going as a team and how he fits into that,” Berhalter tells The Athletic. “Every player wants some type of clarity on their role and the direction where the team is headed. That was a major part of the trip, conveying those messages to him.”

Stewart and Dest have similar backgrounds. Like Dest, Stewart was born and raised in Holland to an American serviceman father and Dutch mother. Stewart’s footballing education was also largely Dutch-based, playing at VVV, Willem II and NAC, then serving as technical director at NAC and AZ Alkmaar after his playing career. But Stewart also played in three World Cups for the U.S., winning more than 100 caps over 14 years. In 2019, he was named the U.S. federation’s first-ever sporting director.

(Photo by Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images)

Seeing Stewart’s success with the U.S. may have played a role in the Dest’s final decision, but Dest’s connection to American soccer at that point was already strong. After playing in the 2017 U-17 World Cup, he also featured for them in the 2019 U-20 World Cup. His connections to many of his U.S. team-mates were formed on those squads, including Lille’s Timothy Weah, Werder Bremen’s Josh Sargent, Bayern Munich’s Chris Richards, and now-Barcelona team-mate Konrad de la Fuente.

A couple days after that lunch in Amsterdam, Dest called Berhalter to tell him the news: he was committing to the U.S.

It is perhaps ironic the Netherlands coach he informed of his decision is now the man bringing him to Barcelona, Ronald Koeman. Dest’s move to Barcelona becomes just the latest major development for a U.S. men’s national team that could be on the threshold of a golden generation.

Just two years after missing the 2018 World Cup, the U.S. have seen two key figures — Weston McKennie and Dest — move to giant clubs, with McKennie completing a transfer from Schalke to Juventus earlier in this window. Those sales come one year after Christian Pulisic moved from Borussia Dortmund to Chelsea. Meanwhile, 17-year-old Gio Reyna is dazzling at Dortmund, 20-year-old Richards has broken into Bayern’s first team, and goalkeeper Zack Steffen is now the No 2 at Manchester City. Tyler Adams, 21, and 20-year-old Sargent are starters at RB Leipzig and Bremen, respectively.


It was in December 2018 when Dest was offered his first professional contract at Ajax, when he was already 18.

Endt says this was “quite late” as there were some doubts over his professionalism.

Dest and those around him would contest whether his clashes with his coaches were always a positive learning experience, and whether he was treated fairly or a big enough effort was made to understand him properly.

“Most of his coaches at Ajax gave him a hard time,” says one source, who suggests that the most supportive coach was former Barca right-back Michael Reiziger during their time together with the Ajax B youth team in 2018-19.

Endt says that, following closely from outside, he was not sure how much influence any of the big name former international players had on the emerging talent.

“They all had their influence, but it is difficult to say how much they helped him, or if they were also obstructing him,” he says. “Sometimes from obstruction comes something positive as well. Maybe they will claim part of the glory of this boy, if it comes to glory, as he still has a long way to go. But many of the coaches had a double relationship. Some of them did not really believe in him, and this could have been a motivation as well for him. (Former Everton and Atletico Madrid defender) Johnny Heitinga (Dest’s U-19 coach for two years) tried to teach him what professional football is like, that it demands some discipline, as well.

“On the pitch was his natural habitat, where he would feel free and strong,” Endt adds. “Outside the pitch he was less mature. When you focus too much on his behaviour or get irritated by some of his actions, maybe you do not see, or you do not want to see, how the real talent is developing. Maybe it is that. Sergino was not the natural guy that everybody talked about as the upcoming talent from the Ajax academy. Some people thought he was too small, but he is physically strong, and determined. In the end they could not escape from his quality. He had a stubbornness, he would go on and whatever obstacle would come by, he would overcome this and show that he could play football. Sometimes being a little difficult can be an advantage for a player. It shows his character and his own willpower.”

Ajax have a long reputation for fast-tracking talented youngsters into their first team — the side which came so close to reaching the 2019 Champions League final contained homegrown talents Frenkie de Jong, Matthijs de Ligt, Donny van de Beek and Kasper Dolberg.

Dest watched that run from the sidelines, but got his chance at the start of the following season by current first-team coach Erik ten Hag. He quite quickly edged out previous first-choice right-back Noussair Mazraoui, another youth product, three years older. He made 38 appearances in total over the 2019-20 season, scoring two goals and giving six assists, and looking very much at home at the senior level.

“I was surprised from the first time he made his debut,” says Vink. “But how Ajax are playing, he is a really typical player for his position. He is fast, technical, good going forward, and he can also defend. That is why he was able to make such fast steps as we saw last year.”

(Photo by Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images)

He also again showed a stubborn, and principled, side when leaving an Ajax team training camp in Qatar last January at a moment of tension between the U.S. and Iranian governments.

“What impressed me most was that he did not change his attitude even a little bit,” Endt says. “He was courageous, he never held back. He still played with the same skilful solutions. He kept doing things you did not expect, in the first team just the same as the youth teams. His attitude did not change, he was not shy, or too humble, he just did his thing, as if nothing was different.”

Such performances and personality started to draw attention from Europe’s biggest clubs, and Dest himself only fuelled the speculation with local media interviews talking about his ambition to “be the most expensive full-back ever” and “play with Mbappe, Ronaldo, Messi, or Neymar”. There was contact with Bayern Munich, and also reported interest from Paris Saint-Germain, but Barcelona quickly became his first-choice destination.

Dest will be presented on Friday as Barca’s most high profile summer 2020 signing, with the team’s fans in Catalonia, America and all over the world expecting big things as he signed a five-year contract with a €400 million release clause. Which is quite a journey for a player who was not widely rated in his early years at Ajax as a likely future star, and who only made his senior debut a little over 12 months ago.

“When he entered the Ajax first team, people wondered if he was ready for it, too,” Endt says, anticipating The Athletic’s reservations over whether this big move has come too soon. “Now you have the same question as he is stepping into another world, a bigger world, maybe harder, as well. For him it is fascinating, as well, and he can’t really lose. (Barcelona) have shown great confidence in his ability. He may need a year to adapt to a different lifestyle, different way of playing football, a different dressing-room code and things like that. He will need good attention from the club to guide him into the new world, but I have no doubts that he can play at that level.”

New Barca coach Koeman knows the Ajax system very well, having been a young player at the club in the mid-1980s, and then as coach in the early 2000s bringing through a talented generation of starlets including Wesley Sneijder, Rafael van der Vaart and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Endt says that Koeman will not be put off by Dest’s youth or the strength of personality which previous coaches found challenging.

“I know that Ronald will not hesitate to put in youngsters, and give them confidence,” says Endt, who was Ajax’s “team manager” when Koeman was coach there. “He himself played professional football when he was 16 in the Groningen first team. He spots not just the technical quality, but also the mental and psychological quality of a player. It helps a lot that he knows Sergino. I can imagine, knowing Ronald, that he is also fond of him. Because he is an original player, and also an original person, he brings something different.”

Vink says he understands completely why Dest grabbed the chance to move up, and that being surrounded by top-quality players at the Nou Camp will help him develop quickly again.

“It is always a risk, but for me it is a very natural choice,” says Vink. “It is good for Sergino that he goes there. He must learn every day — on his defending, his heading, he must be stronger. But you get better and better when you play top games every week. That is good, he will be learning from the best players in the world. I hope he gets a lot of minutes, and he will benefit from that. When he settles in the fans will love his type of player.”

Endt also recognises that there are areas in which Dest must improve but predicts that Koeman is the ideal teacher to have at this moment in his career.

“Sergino still has to learn maybe the real craftsmanship of defending,” he says. “The important thing is to recognise the areas where he can take a risk, and where he cannot. This is something you can learn by playing a lot of matches. And he has an excellent coach who will teach him what to do, and what not to do. This awareness, which develops into tactical insight, will come over the years. Because he is at his best when he can move forward and do his thing. He has enormous energy so he can cover a lot of space. That makes him a modern player.”

Barca have been searching for a new long-term solution at right-back for Dani Alves, who left in 2016 after winning multiple trophies in eight seasons with Barca. Portugal international Nelson Semedo was sold to Wolverhampton this summer after never really convincing in three seasons at the Nou Camp, while midfielder-by-trade Sergi Roberto has also struggled to fill the role when played there regularly in recent years.

“You should not expect him to be a killer in the team already this year,” Endt says. “Maybe in two or three years we will see a very mature player who mixes styles, who has something of Dani Alves as well. It is not fair to compare him right now with Dani Alves, because you are thinking of Dani Alves when he was 28, at the height of his career, and you are comparing it with a boy of 19. But I think he has the same potential.”

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cavani was there to be had for ages and United could've had him ready to go weeks ago if he was a genuine Solskjaer target. That they're just doing so now right at the deadline proves he's pure panic. Already have one stopgap striker in Ighalo, now have another

Riots  if they don't get Sancho. 😂 Horrendous transfer window from them if so.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why Liverpool let Rhian Brewster go

https://theathletic.com/2109221/2020/10/03/liverpool-brewster-sheffield-united-transfer-explained/

brewster-CL-scaled-e1601663479335-1024x683.jpg

Barely 24 hours after Jurgen Klopp had been unveiled as Liverpool’s new manager, he was standing on the balcony of their academy building in Kirkby, sipping a coffee and watching the action unfold below him.

It was October 10, 2015 and the German coach was there to meet staff and take in the under-18s’ Saturday morning showdown with their Stoke City counterparts.

“When I’m managing a club, each young player should smile, because the chance is bigger than it ever was,” Klopp declared. “The door is pretty wide open. Experience is an important point but not the most.”

One striker, just 15 but with pace to burn, caught his eye with a lively 10-minute debut as a late substitute. Academy staff had been so keen for Klopp to see Rhian Brewster in action he had been put on the bench for the under-18s after playing 50 minutes on the back pitch for the under-16s the same morning.

Brewster, Liverpool, Stoke

It did the trick. Klopp was soon on board with the belief among the academy coaches that Liverpool had one of the most exciting English players of his generation on their hands. Brewster was a star in the making and his reputation continued to grow.

Yet five years on from that memorable cameo, Brewster has now been sold without ever scoring a competitive senior goal for Liverpool or making a single Premier League appearance.

Having initially only considered a second loan move in as many seasons earlier this summer, Liverpool ultimately agreed to sanction a permanent transfer this week after Sheffield United agreed to pay their club-record fee of £23.5 million for him. Around £18 million of that figure is understood to be guaranteed, with the rest reliant in performance-related add-ons.

It’s a decision that is bound to divide opinion among Liverpool fans, considering the buzz around Brewster and the fact his goalscoring exploits in pre-season for Klopp’s side following a prolific loan spell at Swansea City in the second half of last season suggested he was ready to make the step up at Anfield.

However, there are several reasons why all parties decided that this was the best possible outcome.

For a start, it’s an eye-watering sum of money in the current climate for a 20-year-old who is still unproven at the highest level. It effectively covers the club’s purchase of two-time Champions League winner Thiago Alcantara from Bayern Munich.

East London-born Brewster had been signed from Chelsea for a compensation fee of just £250,000 in 2015. Then-Liverpool Under-21s boss Michael Beale, who had coached him at the Stamford Bridge club, was crucial in helping to convince the family a move north was in his best interests.

Brewster, Liverpool, City

Key to Sheffield United getting the deal done this week was them agreeing to both a 15 per cent sell-on clause and the inclusion of a buy-back option, which Liverpool can trigger over the next three years if they want to re-sign him and the player is keen on returning. What it would cost them to re-sign Brewster hasn’t been revealed but senior sources at Liverpool insist it’s a figure they regard as realistic if he fulfils his potential at Bramall Lane.

Liverpool inserted similar buy-back clauses when they sold Jordon Ibe and Brad Smith to Bournemouth in deals worth a combined £21 million in the summer of 2016, but neither was ever acted upon.

This isn’t a tale of Brewster being shoved out of the door against his will to balance the books amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The player and his representative, Leon Anderson, have been pushing for this.

Having had a taste of senior football when he scored 11 goals in 22 games to help Swansea make the Championship play-offs after arriving in January, he was desperate to play regularly again this season.

Brewster also held talks with Crystal Palace over a possible return to London but was enthused about moving to Sheffield United after a passionate pitch from their manager Chris Wilder, who has long since admired him. He didn’t fancy sticking around at Liverpool as a bench-warming squad player and, given the array of attacking options at Klopp’s disposal, he couldn’t see the situation changing much over the next 12 months if he just went out on loan again.

Roberto Firmino is firmly established as Liverpool’s first-choice No 9 and Takumi Minamino is the back-up for that central role after making rapid strides in recent months following his January arrival. The £45 million signing of Wolves’ Diogo Jota, who can play across the frontline, two weeks ago made the challenge facing Brewster even greater.

Klopp described Brewster as “a natural goalscorer” after he netted three times in two warm-up games against Stuttgart and Salzburg in August but it was telling that the manager also spoke about how the England Under-21 international “has to be more involved in games”.

There’s a good reason why Firmino is referred to by Klopp as Liverpool’s “engine”. The Brazil international sets the tone with his pressing and intelligently drops off into pockets of space to link play. Those are the areas of Brewster’s game which Klopp felt still needed work.

He would have happily kept him around to iron out those rough edges on the training fields at Melwood but Brewster was in a hurry. Hanging onto a player against his will never sits right with the German, who prides himself on having a squad completely committed to the cause.

“I need a player in the right place in the right moment who is ready to fight,” Klopp told reporters on Friday. “All the boys need to know that we don’t keep them here at all costs just so we have a selection for one or two games a year. If I’m selfish, it never helps really. With a boy like Rhian, I am 100 per cent concerned about his development. He’s our boy. Sometimes we are the right place to make these steps, sometimes we’re not, and we have to admit that.”

Brewster, Klopp

Brewster left Chelsea for Liverpool because he felt there wasn’t a pathway through to the first team for him there. Similarly, he came close to walking away from Anfield two years ago after initially rejecting the club’s offer of a first professional contract due to concerns about a lack of opportunities.

He considered following in the footsteps of his former England youth team-mate and friend Jadon Sancho with a move to the Bundesliga. Borussia Monchengladbach’s advances infuriated Liverpool to such an extent that they threatened them with a tapping-up charge and cancelled a pre-season friendly against them. Ultimately, Klopp managed to convince him to stay put and he signed a five-year contract in July 2018.

“When I spoke to the manager, he said, ‘You are going to be a top striker at this club. Not next season, but the season after you will be in my plans’,” Brewster revealed at the time.

It wasn’t an empty promise from Klopp.

Strikers Danny Ings, Dominic Solanke and Daniel Sturridge all left the club during 2019. The issue was that it took Brewster much longer than expected to recover from a serious injury which had derailed his thrilling progress.

He had left a lasting impression on the club’s senior professionals when he scored a hat-trick in a behind-closed-doors friendly against Accrington Stanley at Melwood at the age of 16 in 2016. The following year, he announced himself to a much larger audience when he fired England Under-17s to World Cup final glory in India. Brewster’s eight-goal haul earned him the tournament’s golden boot.

Foden, Brewster

However, the following January he truly came back down to earth with a bump when he landed awkwardly playing in an under-23s game against Manchester City and needed surgery on both a knee and an ankle. It was 14 months before he played again.

In the absence of Firmino and Mohamed Salah through injury, Brewster was named on the bench for the Champions League semi-final second leg against Barcelona at Anfield in May of last year, with Klopp vowing: “Next season he will be playing, 100 per cent, and he knows that. I have told him already.”

However, Brewster didn’t kick on as expected in the opening months of last season. His only three Liverpool first-team appearances all season came in much-changed line-ups in the domestic cups and at times he dropped back down to the under-23s. In January, the decision was taken to loan him out to Swansea.

His final act for Liverpool proved to be missing the decisive spot-kick after being brought on for the penalty shootout in August’s Community Shield against Arsenal at Wembley.

Leaving Liverpool is a big deal for Brewster, especially as his dad Ian is a lifelong fan who grew up adoring 1980s superstar John Barnes. But he’s an ambitious and driven young man, and at Sheffield United he will get the chance he craves to grace the Premier League and lead the line.

The parting of the ways is amicable. Brewster was a popular figure at Melwood and Klopp was also sympathetic to his situation in the knowledge that he wants to make up for lost time after losing over a year to injury.

The pathway is still there for youngsters at Liverpool. Trent Alexander-Arnold and Curtis Jones are proof of that. But the bar is set incredibly high. Brewster couldn’t quite clear it, but there’s no disgrace in that given the elite attacking personnel he was competing against.

Klopp will watch his development under Wilder at Bramall Lane with interest. That buy-back clause certainly reduces the degree of risk attached to waving goodbye to such a prodigious talent so young.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Inside a failed deal: What now for Leeds and the confident, coveted Cuisance?

https://theathletic.com/2104327/2020/10/02/leeds-failed-deal-cuisance-bayern-munich-midfielder/

cuisance-bayern-scaled-e1601553602303-1024x682.jpg

After the awkward parting of ways came the sombre flight home; a joyless journey back to a city Michael Cuisance thought he was leaving. Munich had not kicked him out but Cuisance said his goodbyes on Tuesday, heading for England on his terms.

It is rare for players to actively seek an exit from Bayern Munich but Cuisance left the club in no doubt. Bayern are European champions, crowned in August for a sixth time, and immoveable at the top of the German footballing tree but last week Cuisance told them flatly he wanted to leave before the current transfer window closed. Irrespective of Bayern’s stature or the fact he had moved to Bavaria just a year earlier, first-team football was more attainable elsewhere and Cuisance was anxious to explore the offers being made for him.

The best proposal was from Leeds United, both in his eyes and also those of Bayern, where the transfer policy revolves around three types of signings.

The first is the elite player who walks into their team and helps maintain their dominance.

The second is Alphonso Davies, the young recruit with enough about him to step up here and there until the games come regularly.

Cuisance, who Leeds were bidding £20 million for, was closer to the third type of footballer Bayern target. They take the attitude that any prospect who falls short of their first team should at least be able to turn a profit. They gamble on kids but try to gamble safely, weighing up the resale value of the talent they bring in. One way or another, every deal is made to work for them.

However, Cuisance’s status was not so easy to pigeon-hole. He was expendable in as much as Bayern were willing to sell but at the point where discussions with Leeds went beyond standard contact last week, the Germans’ hierarchy insisted on covering their backs. They would let Cuisance go and let him leave permanently but only if the contract included a buy-back clause giving them the chance to re-sign him in the future. It was their way of saying Cuisance’s departure was not indicative of a lack of belief in his potential.

Leeds agreed to that compromise because the transfer seemed worth it. The clause was steep and punitive, protecting them from a cheap raid, and it promised them a precocious talent. Cuisance needs polishing and honing, an imaginative midfielder whose risk-taking can be brilliant and infuriating, but not for the first time, Leeds felt they were about to raise the bar in their dressing room. The green light for negotiations came in the hours after their win over Sheffield United last Sunday and, on Tuesday evening, a fee was agreed.

The plan was to unveil Cuisance on Thursday. The 21-year-old took a flight from Munich on Wednesday and began his medical. Leeds were ready to meet his wage demands and finalise a long-term contract. They started putting together promotional material for his unveiling but the move came to a shuddering halt when scans turned up an issue with one of Cuisance’s feet. Leeds performed further assessments and weighed up the risk. After mulling the results over and taking advice from head of medicine Rob Price, they pulled out of the transfer. A shocked Cuisance received the news and returned to the airport.

Bayern will take him back, as they are bound to do, and there is interest in Cuisance from elsewhere, not least from Marseille, who can offer him Champions League football this season. But his aborted move to Leeds is the latest chapter in a short career with its fair share of scrapes. What next for one of Europe’s freshest midfielders?

Cuisance’s reputation as a free spirit grew in his younger years in his native France where they spotted a sweet left foot, the vision to dictate from the middle of the pitch and a knack for timing his passes with precision. He saw balls that other boys did not and, as Jean-Robert Faucher, one of his earliest junior coaches, put it, Cuisance had the “trump card” of strong self-confidence; an uninhibited lad who believed himself to be as good as he was, if not better.

“His mentality was superb,” said Faucher, who worked with Cuisance before second-tier club Nancy picked him up in 2014. Cuisance is a native of Strasbourg and trained for five years with that city’s club until they ran into financial trouble. “He had no fear, no fear of tackling hard or going into a duel with a bigger guy. He had no qualms with taking the initiative in the group.

“His balance was great, he could wrong-foot an opponent and his left foot had this beautiful quality. And whatever we did in training, he would do more. He would push himself. That marks out the kids who will make it from the rest.

“If he had a weakness, it was that he developed a little later. Now he is a beast but back then the other kids were often taller and bigger. That’s the complexity of physical development.

“He was lacking power and he was quite skinny but while lacking these things, he demonstrated a huge amount of personality and character. He didn’t like it if he wasn’t playing or if he was taken off. This is the sign of a good character, to me. He had things that are hard to explain or teach: the timing of his runs, the sense and knowledge of the right pass to make, the pass to secure the team or to progress the team up the field. I can only describe it as clear-sightedness in possession.

“I would compare him to Miralem Pjanic. He has pretty much the same talent, the sense of counter-attacking and how to transition.”

Faucher, who was speaking to The Athletic 24 hours before the transfer to Elland Road collapsed, believed Cuisance would handle the intensity of Marcelo Bielsa’s training and tactics. “Michael is a worker,” Faucher said. “He will cope.” But Leeds knew from experience that any fitness issues would put the midfielder on the back foot immediately, with a head coach who never compromises on the conditioning of his squad.

Cuisance

Cuisance’s short career to date tells a story of a player who tries not to stand still; of a player who tries to get what he wants. In France and in other parts of Germany, they will recognise certain aspects of his attempt to leave the Allianz Arena. Nancy planned to steer Cuisance from their academy into professional football but lost him for a compensation fee of £250,000 in 2017 after he rejected a scholarship with them. Cuisance wanted an immediate professional contract but Nancy refused to oblige, insisting he should start on apprentice terms instead. “There is no question of granting (his) request,” said the club’s president, Jacques Rousselot, and the stand-off became so tense that Cuisance was estranged from the club for several months.

That summer, aged 17 and free of any contractual restrictions, he signed for Borussia Monchengladbach on a five-year deal, amid strong interest from Manchester City and Juventus. Nancy were powerless to keep him. Pep Guardiola spoke with Cuisance on City’s behalf but could not persuade him to move to England. “It was hard to say no,” Cuisance told L’Equipe. “We said nice things to each other but that’s between us. Maybe I’ll join up with him one day.”

“He refused to sign a contract in France,” Faucher says. “He turned it down and really resisted. He decided he would go to Germany. Of course, it’s not easy to move to a different country at the age that he did but he imposed himself really quickly and strongly, which is a mark of the kid and his self-confidence.”

Monchengladbach’s attention was drawn to Cuisance by scouting reports of his performances in France’s international youth set-up, where he has been prominent since the age of 15. There was much to admire about him. Cuisance had his cultured left foot and a talent for finding space to work in, pulling the strings in the No 10 position or lying a little deeper and using his passing range to pick out runners ahead of him. As a source in Monchengladbach told The Athletic: “He had a lot of instinct. He was able to do things other players would not do or could not do, especially at his age. Some of it was spectacular but some of it was also risky. There were risks in his game, for sure.”

Cuisance

They are careful at Monchengladbach not to paint Cuisance as “a bad guy or a difficult boy”, in spite of their own run-ins with him. He was popular and so good in his first season there that he won their player of the year award, a prize no one expected him to collect. Injuries initially brought him into the team but then his sparkling form made him difficult to shift from it.

The 2018-19 season was different. Cuisance made only 11 appearances and became unhappy with his bit-part role. The club sensed a shift in his demeanour and a drop in his effort in training. Tension around him came to a head when Cuisance turned up for a training session wearing boots without laces, an open display of disillusionment and dissent.

Christoph Kramer, Monchengladbach’s Germany international, took the kid to task. “It’s simply inappropriate,” Kramer said. “It’s a matter of respect for the group. You can say positively that he’s extremely ambitious and wants to be a starter, to take on that responsibility. Those are good qualities. But there’s a way to go about doing this.”

The club’s captain, Lars Stindl, tried to smooth the waters without success and last August the saga ended with another transfer, a £10 million switch to Bayern. Monchengladbach suspected the perennial champions had been manoeuvring in the background for a while and Cuisance left to the sound of cutting comments from their coach, Marco Rose. “I got the impression Borussia had become too small for him,” Rose said.

“He can be a difficult character,” says journalist Christian Falk, head of sport at German outlet Bild, “but the player definitely has talent. That’s why Bayern bought him. The transfer was a surprise. He didn’t play regularly at Gladbach and it’s unusual to say, ‘If I can’t get my turn at Gladbach, I’ll take off at Bayern’.”

Falk’s view of Cuisance is that he thrives on the belief of a coach and the challenge of running a midfield. “He finds it more difficult to come to terms with a supporting role,” Falk says. “He reminds me a bit of Mesut Ozil when he plays… and Mesut Ozil when he doesn’t. When he plays badly, there is no body language.”

There was another minor flashpoint at Bayern last December when Cuisance was demoted to the bench for a second-string match after turning up late for a team meeting. Reports in Germany said he had been at Davies’ 19th birthday party the night before. But those who have tracked Cuisance’s path say that if you cut through the patches of controversy around him, you find someone with vast potential. “He’s very confident but by no means arrogant or entitled,” says a source at Bayern. Bielsa’s sense of discipline would, in theory, have helped to steer Cuisance down the straight and narrow.

“I never had any behaviour problems with him,” says Sebastien Hanriot, who coached Cuisance in Nancy’s academy. “He was a respectful and polite youngster. On the pitch he has character and he doesn’t let himself get pushed around. I think since he always wants to play, when he’s not playing maybe he doesn’t have the right attitude. But he doesn’t have a bad background. It is three years since he left us, though, so I cannot say how he has evolved in the head.”

In an interview with L’Equipe in July, Cuisance tackled the questions about his personality head-on. “We all went through these periods of being young but I always had the feeling to give everything for football,” he said. “When I’m rubbish, I’m the first to say it. When I don’t do enough, the same. When I don’t bring enough to the table, the next day I do three times more.”

There were opportunities for Leeds to sign a different midfielder entirely. They monitored Udinese’s Rodrigo De Paul but have not been not tempted to meet his £35 million valuation. They examined Ovie Ejaria but decided to leave that option alone before he left Liverpool for Championship side Reading. Ultimately, the availability of Cuisance pushed all other options off the table. Like the toss-up between Rodrigo and Ollie Watkins, Leeds struggled to see how a better option than Cuisance would materialise, and with Adam Forshaw yet to return from hip surgery, their midfield needed reinforcing.

On Tuesday evening, it was a done deal in the minds of all sides. Cuisance was ready to sign. By Thursday lunchtime, Leeds were rapidly backing out. Bielsa avoided commenting on Cuisance at his weekly press conference, saying he did not want “a repeat of the (Dan) James situation” — a reference to James’ collapsed move from Swansea City in January 2019. It might be that, by then, Bielsa already knew.

It leaves Leeds with a hole in their transfer bucket and Cuisance asking himself where to turn.

Marseille might plough on with their pursuit of him but Cuisance’s failed transfer to England will not make a move elsewhere straightforward. At Elland Road they have just a couple of days to find an alternative before Monday night’s deadline passes.

Leeds sold themselves to Cuisance as a club where he could shine and stick. His search for a long-term home goes on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Barca have raised their bid for Manchester City's CB Eric Garcia to €15m, including add ons. Todibo continues to evaluate proposals. Dortmund has joined the race, but there are many doubts from his agent and the player himself over an exit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

  • 0 members are here!

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

talk chelse forums

We get it, advertisements are annoying!
Talk Chelsea relies on revenue to pay for hosting and upgrades. While we try to keep adverts as unobtrusive as possible, we need to run ad's to make sure we can stay online because over the years costs have become very high.

Could you please allow adverts on this website and help us by switching your ad blocker off.

KTBFFH
Thank You