Sergino Dest did not have an easy start to life at AC Milan following his arrival on loan from Barcelona but he is slowly beginning to convince.
Dest was somewhat of an emergency addition from Paolo Maldini and Ricky Massara given the serious injury sustained by Alessandro Florenzi towards the end of August, and he appears to be settling with the passage of time.
Calciomercato.com report that Milan have a €20m option to buy as part of the loan deal with Barcelona which would obviously represent a substantial outlay for a position where there is already Davide Calabria and Florenzi on multi-year deals.
However, as Dest impresses at the World Cup in Qatar with the USA, the management are becoming more convinced about attempting to keep the former Ajax man. The report mentions an intention to hold talks with Barca in the coming weeks to change the terms of the deal by reducing the €20m option.
In addition, the Rossoneri plan to leverage the will of the player who feels appreciated at Milan and seems to be settling in, while his characteristics are useful to the squad.
The World Cup has shown that Dest is better at right wing than as defender. But of course, there are already Saelmaekers and Messias
Dest is going back to Barca at the end of the season.
Even if Barca lowers the asking price he is still too expensive and has too high of a salary to be a back up,
Milan already has an overpaid back up, part time player part-time patient in Florenzi locked up till 2025 on a 3 mil salary.
They are not going to sign another high salary RB when Theo hasn’t had a decent back up on the left side for 4 years now.
Dest should go and play for a club that plays with wing backs . He is defensive liability as a full back
spot on!!
Calabria can shift to left back
You touched on every point exactly. He would need to cut his salary in half and Barcelona would have to do the same with their fee. Chances of both happening are close to zero. Not going to happen so pointless to even talk about Milan retaining him.
He is not much worse defensively than Theo, if you watched France vs Denmark you could see that clearly. What Milan doesn’t need is 2 wing backs in 4 man defense. That is it, if what you wrote is true same should be worth for Theo.
With 20mil, surely we can do better. Plus with Theo on the left, I prefer a more defensive-minded RB and so far Dest seem clueless or uninterested in that department.
If they can haggle the price to 2M€ then sure, buy him. But definitely NOT for anything over 10M€
We have already calabria. He’s been around for sometime we forget he’s still 25 yo. Calabria and Florenzi are enough for us, at least until other much more needed upgrading positions get filled. Right wing, new young striker, and Theo’s understudy are much more in need of upgrading
If we need a third choice right back Saalamakers can play there too, and Kalulu. Not worth the money.
How bout we just swap saladmaker and dest, I think that’s the solution. Not sure Pioli is smart enough to see that that makes sense.