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Kyle Bonagura, ESPN staff writer
USA right-back Sergino Dest says he intends to fight for his place at Barcelona after a poor loan spell at Milan last season.
“I see myself staying,” Dest said on Friday, ahead of Barcelona’s preliminary tour of the United States. Like I can and will prove it. My mentality is to stay here and have a really nice season.”
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Dest didn’t delve deeply into a conversation he had with Barcelona manager Xavi Hernandez about his future, but says he walked away from it wanting to stay at Spotify Camp Nou.
“He just said to me, ‘I’m going to give you a fair chance to prove yourself,’” Dest said. “That’s what it is at the moment. He said to me, ‘I think you have qualities, but it’s up to you, you have to show me,’ and I totally agree with him.
“So I guess it’s all up to me. I think I have some qualities that could be good for the team, but I have to show them and be consistent.”
Barcelona suffers from a lack of fixed options in the right-back position, behind last season’s first player, Jules Conde, who prefers to play in the center of defense.
Earlier this week, Barcelona president Joan Laporta commented on the situation, saying, “We are missing a right-back and we are working on it.”
Barcelona signed Dest from Ajax for $20 million in 2020 and had an encouraging first season, making 41 appearances in all competitions under former coach Ronald Koeman. However, after injury problems and Koeman’s dismissal, Dest lost his place in the team for the second half of the 2021-22 season.
Dest initially wanted to stay at Barcelona last season, but after being left out of the team for the first three matches, he left on loan to Milan, where he made just 14 appearances in all competitions.
After starting all four matches for the US men’s national team at the World Cup, Dest played just five matches the rest of the season for Milan in what he admitted was a difficult period.
“It’s a really tough moment in my career, in my life as well,” said Dest. “And obviously when you get moments like that, you learn a lot from them. So, for me, I become stronger mentally.
“You can look at it in two ways. You can look at it in a negative way: everything is going so you want to quit. Or you are just trying to find a positive way in the negative things that have happened.
“So that was the thing that I did. I always looked at it positively and was like, ‘Okay, right now I’m not playing, I’m not going well, but these times I can just work on myself.'”
Barcelona will play four friendlies in the United States as part of the Soccer Champions Tour: Juventus in Santa Clara, California (July 22); Arsenal in Englewood, California (July 26); Real Madrid in Arlington, Texas (July 29); and Milan in Las Vegas (1 August).
