🇲🇽🇺🇸 Santi, Pepi and what it means to make the jump to Europe
One is celebrating a championship, the other suffering relegation, but neither player's legacy abroad is cemented.
Santi Gimenez might not be on top of the world, but it sure feels like he’s getting there.
The Cruz Azul product missed out on Tata Martino’s World Cup roster, but has been a man on a mission. He’s scored often for Feyenoord, picking up a little hardware along the way. He lifted the Eredivisie championship plate as the Rotterdam-based club won its first league title since 2016–17.
His 15 league goals were good for fourth in the Eredivisie. Factor in five more scored in the Europa League and three goals in the cup, and Gimenez ended with 23 goals in all competitions, a record for a Mexican in his first season after moving to Europe.
All of that has earned interest from even larger clubs, with Milan the latest team reportedly showing interest (Inter and Sevilla are other destinations that have popped up during the spring).
As Gimenez was celebrating winning the Dutch league, elsewhere in the Netherlands another dual-national was watching chaos unfold as his club’s supporters invaded the pitch. They weren’t there to lift the players onto their shoulders.
Ricardo Pepi’s Groningen eventually dropped a 3-2 result to Ajax when that match was completed days later. They lost 6-0 last weekend and when they host Sparta Rotterdam to finish out the season Saturday, they’ll try to snap a 10-match winless spell. Nine of those 10 are losses.
Not that Groningen’s relegation will fall at Pepi’s feet - nor will his future be overly tied to the team going down this season since he’s returning to parent club Augsburg. From there, he hopes, there will be a move to a team struggling less, suffering less than the relegation fighters he’s played for so far in both Germany and the Netherlands since moving to Europe. A big bid from PSV seems promising.
The case of Concacaf’s Netherlands-based forwards aren’t the exact same, but with so many parallels, it’s been impossible for fans not to compare them.
Pepi was a surprising omission from the United States’ World Cup roster, while Gimenez went into Mexico’s final camp before missing the cut as well. Both were eligible for Mexico, Gimenez born in his father’s native Argentina, Pepi in El Paso to Mexican parents.
Their paths diverge in part because of their age - in any discussion it has to be underlined that Pepi was born in early 2003 while Gimenez is an April 2001 baby. But their journey to high-level European soccer also differs.
MLS generally is praised for being open to selling its players abroad, with Liga MX much stingier about when they’ll sell rising national team stars and for how much.
Unlike many transfers out of Liga MX, Cruz Azul’s sale of Gimenez was relatively straight-forward. The player didn’t have to wait until his contract expired this summer, with the club willing to let Gimenez go in summer 2022 even at the expense of their first team, which struggled to find a consistent scorer in his absence. The move reportedly netted Cruz Azul €4 million with the club also retaining 50% of his next sale as well, something that could lead to a reasonable sum should a move to La Liga or Serie A materialize.
The question is how the national team setup can incentivize club teams to continue doing the same and allowing its best players to go, to see having a prospect desired by European clubs as an economic opportunity for the club and a chance for a player to grow personally by receiving top coaching, facing competition for a starting role and testing their level against some of the world’s best.
But, of course, not every move works.
Pepi looked ready for Europe after scoring 13 goals in 24 MLS matches for FC Dallas and adding three national team goals.
But “Europe” is a big place, with lots of different places in it. Not every club is made the same. Not every team has those coaches or is a good cultural fit for a player.
Simply making the jump isn’t the key. Making it to a place where you can excel, where you’ll get that coaching, have a support system, feel patience instead of pressure, is what matters. Going to a club used to developing talent, one that had expectations of Gimenez but also alternatives if he struggled, made all the difference for the Mexican ace.
A player doesn’t have much of a choice. Would you turn down the opportunity of a lifetime, the chance to change your family’s financial situation or to increase your own personal fame, just because you didn’t love the fit?
Augsburg turned out not to be a great fit for Pepi, who couldn’t score before going on loan to Groningen where it clicked, with a dozen league goals for the northern Netherlands side (trailing Gimenez by three and tied for sixth in the league).
A bad fit in Europe isn’t as uncommon as it might seem. Look through the United States’ roster from the 2019 World Cup. There are two players (Tim Weah and Sergino Dest) who are senior team regulars, a few others on the fringe and a lot of names who make you say “Whoa, what did happen to him?” Sometimes it’s the player not being able to break through, simply not being good enough to make it at the high level where they hoped to get to after standing out on the youth levels. But plenty of times, it’s a bad fit and once a player goes somewhere they’re more comfortable, they excel once again.
What about Mexico’s? The return is mostly the same, with two national team regulars (Diego Lainez and Kevin Alvarez), three players with senior caps and a few Liga MX regulars. The difference is most never made ‘the jump’ across the Atlantic to see if they could stick, to test themselves. Sometimes it’s about a lack of interest, other times a passport, but Mexican club’s hesitancy to put players in the shop window also played a part.
Making it to the highest levels of the sport is really hard. Not many players do it. And even once a player is in the setup at a top club, there’s no guarantee of success.
Santi Gimenez had a great first year in Europe, and Mexico fans should be excited about the potential of a capable 9 to finish off the opportunities the team created during the last cycle and then saw fizz out.
But Pepi’s success in his loan move is another reminder these things are not linear. A move to PSV or another club might be the jolt he needs to reach the levels U.S. fans hoped he would in 2022.
Or…it might not. Maybe feasting on middling Dutch defenses with a bad team or powering past players in MLS is his level.
Every player is an individual, and they’ll have their own paths. Most never will reach the top, but some will. Rarely will they do it in the same way.
That’s worth remembering when we’re comparing players, even when it’s trash talk about a rival. One day, a player is on top of the world. Getting there should be applauded. Staying there, even more so.
Tomorrow we’ll look ahead to the first leg of the Liga MX final, talking about the biggest reason Tigres have surged into the final after a mediocre regular season.