Saturday a week ago Xavi Simons played PlayStation again. For the 18-year-old, it was again not enough for a place in the Paris Saint-Germain squad. And the young players who cavort in the orbit of Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé and Neymar, but are not taken into account by coach Mauricio Pochettino, gamble while PSG is playing football. At least that’s how Pochettino sees the situation.
“We have 35 professionals, so it is not easy for the boys to get a place here. Of course, it is not ideal if a talent trains with the team during the week and then only plays Playstation at home at the weekend,” replied the Argentine recently when asked why the apparently so highly talented youngsters don’t get a chance in the first team.
One of them is Xavi Simons. The Dutchman, who also has a Spanish passport, was trained in La Masia for ten years, still decried as a sacred place for football talents, although the yield in recent years has been manageable.
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Xavi, Messi, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets – there are not high-flyers in every generation who later stir up the professional sector.
Xavi Simons far from the professional PSG team
Simons was once again someone who could do it, the youth trainers at Barça were convinced of that. The farewell to the mega-talent was all the more incomprehensible in the environment of FC Barcelona 2019. Simons moved to PSG, allegedly the Parisians had surpassed Barças salary offer many times over. Angry tongues also claim that Simon’s advisor Mino Raiola had requested special treatment from his client, which the club indignantly refused to offer.
Almost two and a half years later, Simons is still a talent. Or to put it another way: It is time for the breakthrough, at least for the first steps towards it. Simons is currently a long way from that. He shoots everything short and sweet in the Youth League (three goals, four assists in four games) and also swirls in the U19 of the Dutch. In the PSG first team, Simons only played exactly 60 seconds in the last and current seasons.
Most of the time he is not even in Pochettino’s squad, as was the case in the last league game of the Parisians at Girondins Bordeaux (3-2). “They are 17, 18, 19 years old. They are talented and have to play. It’s a shame that we don’t have this opportunity at the moment, that they can’t show their qualities. You have to be patient,” said Pochettino.
Xavi Simons (PSG) in the Youth League game against RB Leipzig
Fotocredit: Getty Images
Pochettino has to win the Champions League
Like hardly any other coach in Europe, Pochettino is doomed to success. In the Sheikh Club, only winning the Champions League counts; if you don’t bring the handle pot to the Seine, you can run away again straight away.
Pochettino has enough to do with bending his sometimes moody superstars so that they win games together. He has to deliver trophies, so you can’t afford to also promote the next generation.
“We would like to have the opportunity to bet more on the youth. The fans also hope that players from the youth who identify with the club make the breakthrough. The fact that this is not the case at the moment is not only due to the young players , but also on the structures, “explained Pochettino.
Simons: Instagram star with its own logo
So is Simons just in the wrong club or maybe he doesn’t have it? The game in Bordeaux comes closer to the answer to that question. While Simons and Edouard Michut were left out, Ismael Gharbi (17) and Junior Dina Ebimbe (20) were in the squad, both like Simons in the central midfield at home. And for Simons things get even worse: Ebimbe even slipped into the starting XI and was allowed to participate for 75 minutes.
Obviously you can also dare to throw the boys in at Paris Saint-Germain every now and then without your head being torn off.
But that doesn’t get Simons any further, the 18-year-old is treading on the spot in Paris. Everything was set in motion for a world career early on. At the age of 14, the first sponsorship contract including his own logo with the initials XS. FC Barcelona recognized the boy’s potential beyond the boundaries of a soccer field and built Simons into a social media star. Simons now has 3.7 million followers on Instagram.
Peter van der Veen, Simon’s first coach at the Dutch U15, remembered a game in Belgium in an interview with “DAZN”. “People really wanted to see Xavi. After the game, 300 children were waiting in front of the team bus. Xavi needed security to get through the crowd,” said van der Veen.
Simons: Moving to Liverpool the solution?
In the Netherlands in particular, his career is being closely monitored, the Simons hype is still booming, even if things are not going according to plan in Paris. When Simons was kicked out of the U19 with three other players in September, there was a lot of shouting at home. The boys had invited two girls to one of the rooms and thus violated the corona regulations.
Because he may train with Messi, Mbappé and Neymar every now and then, but not play, Raiola is looking for a new club, according to several French media outlets. Simon’s contract expires at the end of the season, which simplifies the work for Raiola. If no transfer fee has to be paid, the number of interested parties grows and you can get more money out of the salary.
One of the clubs that is said to be interested in Simons is recently Liverpool FC. The newspaper “Sun” wrote that Simons was targeted by the Reds. Negotiations are allowed from January.
At FC Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain they saw great things from Xavi Simons, but couldn’t get the button to open on him. Jürgen Klopp would undoubtedly be able to do this. And Simons would be very close to his idol every day: Virgil van Dijk.
For the time being, Simons would be happy not to have any more time for PlayStation on Saturdays.
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