To better understand the U.S. men’s national team before it begins the World Cup in Qatar, The Athletic traveled to the hometowns of several of its most important figures. We found a squad shaped not only by American society, but also influenced by traditions from every corner of the globe.
“Art for the sake of art,” bestselling Dutch author Auke Kok once said, means nothing in the Netherlands.
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“It’s not appreciated,” Kok told David Winner in “Brilliant Orange,” Winner’s seminal work on the intersection of Dutch football, history and culture. “Art must have a goal. We say: What is the function? That’s a very deep Dutch principle. What’s the use? What’s the purpose? What’s it for?”
That sort of mindset is borne of the Netherlands’ geography. A full 26 percent of the country’s land mass is below sea level. Most of that terrain was man-made, reclaimed from the water and now kept dry by a massive network of canals, pumping stations and dikes. It’s a small and crowded nation, with nearly 18 million people squeezing into an area not much larger than the state of Maryland. The never-ending fight with the sea and the sheer number of humans in such a tiny country mean space is at a premium. Every slice of land must be accounted for, every building and public area meticulously designed and planned.
“The Dutch are pragmatic, right? That’s in our history,” said New England Revolution assistant coach Dave van den Bergh, a native Amsterdammer who came up through the famed Ajax academy and earned one cap for the Netherlands before ending his playing career and beginning his coaching journey in the U.S. “We had to be pragmatic with space, with architecture. We had to be pragmatic in our battle with the water, to find new land, all that stuff.”
When Van den Bergh was growing up, that pragmatism governed the country’s football. He graduated from Ajax’s academy to its first team in 1995. That squad, which had won the UEFA Champions League weeks before Van den Bergh was promoted, is still considered one of the best in the history of the sport. But while the group was immensely talented, it didn’t play with too much flair. Manager Louis van Gaal built the team more around clever solutions than fantastical visions.
“Everything was very, very functional,” Van den Bergh said. “There was not a whole lot of, let me say, YouTube-worthy moves. As a team, the soccer was really good, the spacing was good, everything was good about that team. They were world champions for a reason. But you do not go and watch that team to go for an individual highlight reel.”
Things have of course changed over the years, but Ajax, understandably, still broadly sticks with the same approach. With few exceptions, players are expected to understand their position and those of their teammates, to really think about their movements and actions, to play quickly and simply. It’s largely the same for the Dutch national team, which is now led by Van Gaal. In Holland, in both soccer and life, function generally dominates form and egalitarianism usually takes precedence over individuality.
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Sergiño Dest never fit with that mindset. Perhaps that’s part of why the Ajax product won’t be suiting up for his native Netherlands at the World Cup. Instead, he will represent the homeland of his father, the United States.
In 2016, Van den Bergh, then the head coach of the U.S. U-15 team, led the initial effort to bring Dest into the U.S. program in 2016 after a contact at Ajax told him about an academy player who happened to be an American citizen.
“He’s different,” said Van den Bergh. “That’s a strength of his. Hopefully it doesn’t become a weakness.”
Dest’s hometown of Almere. (Photo: Sam Stejskal)Dest’s story began in Almere, a city of slightly more than 200,000, about 25 miles east of central Amsterdam. Almere is the Netherlands’ newest city. The land on which it sits wasn’t reclaimed (through damming off portions of a body of water and then pumping all of it out) until the late-1960s. The first residents didn’t move in until 1976. Where old Amsterdam is tight, cramped and vertical, with the tall, narrow buildings on some of the inner city’s cobbled streets seeming to lean in toward each other, Almere is spread out, modern and colorful. The buildings here have an almost whimsical quality to them. Some of the homes wouldn’t look out of place in a Dr. Seuss book.
Almere has served as a fascinating laboratory for city planning, a destination for architecture enthusiasts and an illustration of how municipalities can successfully integrate nature into an urban environment. It’s experimental — residents are regularly encouraged to give input and make choices about land use and infrastructure design. Politicians, architects and planners from every corner of the globe travel here to look at and learn from the city.
The core of town, though, is a bit antiseptic. The exit from the central train station deposits riders into what amounts to an outdoor mall populated with international chains like Zara, H&M and Burger King. There are still canals and bikes everywhere. It’s still Dutch. It’s just a bit different than the norm.
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“It was built up more or less like an American city, with suburbs,” said Van den Bergh. “It’s like suburbia, almost.”
Things get a little bit more interesting once you move out of downtown. De Fantasie, a cluster of about a dozen homes located across a small lake from central Almere, became reality through a contest commissioned by the city to build the simplest houses imaginable. There were a few parameters, including a rule banning the use of any foundations in construction.
One of the most well-known homes there was designed in 1982 by architect Jan Benthem, who was responsible for modernizing Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. It consists of four tiny, windowless box rooms and one large, open living space encased in glass walls overlooking a canal. It’s held up by a latticework of radiant green steel triangles. It’s a striking, modern home, a monument to simplicity. Benthem, whom Winner interviewed in “Brilliant Orange,” still lives in it.
Architect Jan Benthem’s home in De Fantasie. (Photo: Sam Stejskal)“I think it is very Dutch to look for a simple solution,” Benthem told Winner. “And the biggest thrill in our work is to find an even simpler solution. That is what we like. In the end the most satisfying solution is the one where you have cleared everything away and there is no solution at all any more but, at the same time, the problem has been solved.”
Dest grew up not far from De Fantasie. His father Kenneth, now 74, was born in Suriname, which at the time was a Dutch colony, but he moved with his family to Brooklyn as a youngster. After playing soccer at SUNY Canton in upstate New York, the elder Dest was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in the Vietnam War. He remained in the military after Vietnam, and was eventually stationed in Germany. While there, he’d occasionally travel to Amsterdam for leisure time. He met Sergiño’s mother, a Dutchwoman of Surinamese origin, on one such trip. They began dating, broke up due to the strains of long distance, but later ended up back together, with the couple ultimately settling in Almere, where they had Sergiño.
At school, Dest stood out to his teachers from a young age — not because of any special talent, but for the way he held himself apart from the group.
“They always noticed that whenever the students had to do things together, he always was outside the circle a bit, observing the people, not really in the middle of it,” said Kenneth Dest. “That was his nature. Seeing what type of individuals they were, not always jumping in, a bit quiet.”
Although he kept some distance at school, Dest was always comfortable with a ball at his feet. But even his football preferences were a bit unusual for a Dutch kid coming of age in the 2000s. Growing up, he didn’t idolize Wesley Sneijder, Arjen Robben, Robin van Persie or the other stars who led the Netherlands to a runner-up finish at the 2010 World Cup. Rather, he latched on to a trio of big-name, flashy Brazilians.
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“I watched little movies from Ronaldinho, from good soccer players — Robinho, Ronaldo Lima — and I was always practicing them outside of my home,” Dest said from outside Zonnewiel in a video produced by U.S. Soccer in 2020. “I trained myself really hard, I tried to do every trick and I couldn’t go inside ’til the trick worked out.”
To anyone who has seen Dest play for Ajax, Barcelona, AC Milan or the U.S., the fact that he spent a good chunk of his youth trying to emulate Ronaldinho will come as no surprise. The 22-year-old, who spent part of his youth career as a winger, is masterful with the ball, capable of sublime tricks uncommon for any player, nevermind a right back.
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It’s a special talent, but it’s also antithetical to the classic Dutch approach. Dest can play simple, one- and two-touch soccer. Watching some of his better performances, it’s clear that he understands tactics and knows how to play the role that his coach asks of him. But the strong undercurrent of individualism in his game rises to the surface fairly often. Dest sometimes looks uninterested in playing the role that his team requires of him. Occasionally, he’ll neglect his defensive duties or dribble into trouble. His game is rarely simple. Sometimes that works in his favor, other times it burns him. Either way, Dest is decidedly not pragmatic.
“He works his ass off every single day, whether it’s on the field, whether it’s off the field, he does a lot of stuff for himself,” said Van den Bergh. “Now, whether it is always the right thing? He loves to do tricks and all that kind of stuff, sometimes I think coaches would like to see him put a little bit more effort into the tactical part of his game, or functional technique instead of the tricks. When you’re a right back, maybe you don’t want to do too many of those in your own 18-yard box.”
That kind of approach made things difficult for Dest at Ajax. He joined the club’s academy from the youth system of second-division side Almere City FC in 2012 at the age of 12. He didn’t start regularly for the club until he reached the U-17s, though. Part of the reason that Ajax staffer tipped Van den Bergh off to Dest in 2016 was because, as a reserve in the Ajax academy, Dest wasn’t seen as a legitimate prospect for the Dutch youth national team setup. To them, his unpredictable style made him expendable.
Dest ended up joining and sticking with the U.S., in part because of the pride that both he and his father, who served in the U.S. military for roughly 25 years before retiring from the Army in 1994, feel in their Americanness, and in part because the program prioritized him in a way that the Dutch national team never did.
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“He felt a sense of loyalty,” said Kenneth Dest. “He played in the youth World Cup with the U.S. He got his chances with the U.S., not with the Netherlands. Only after he started growing as a player, then all of a sudden they had an eye for him. But you could always see the steady line with the U.S. The loyalty, that matters to him.”
Dest with Ajax’s U-19 team. (Erwin Spek/Soccrates/Getty Images)His freewheeling tendencies weren’t the only thing that put him at a disadvantage at Ajax. Dest, to this day, has a habit of questioning everything. His queries extended well beyond trying to understand tactics and his role in the team. Every drill, every task and every gym session at De Toekomst would be accompanied by him asking why he had to perform it, no matter how much the inquiries broke protocol or annoyed staffers.
In small doses, that curiosity is a great trait for a kid. It shows a natural desire to understand more about one’s surroundings. But to do so every hour of every day? In an environment that puts as much emphasis on adherence to systems as Ajax? It wore on people.
“They’re looking at you like you’re here to learn, and you’re not to question why,” said Kenneth Dest. “You’re just to do what we ask. Sergiño is not that. Maybe it’s like me, his mother, we’re both kind of headstrong, too. And in the States, the question in the States, when I went to school, you always ask ‘why?’ And the teacher gave you an answer. But not in the Netherlands. They don’t like it if younger people are asking questions. And he did it in a naive way, which brought him into trouble with some of them at Ajax.”
Dest, of course, didn’t let anyone’s negative perception of him close any doors. The bullheadedness that so aggravated some of his coaches at Ajax is the same quality that kept him working so hard when it seemed as if he didn’t have much of a chance of making it to the big time.
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“He literally does not care about what anyone thinks of him,” Van den Bergh said. “That is a really good trait to have, because he was told no a million times when he was younger at Ajax. ‘No, you’re not good enough. No, you’re not a starter. No, no, no.’ And he just didn’t care. He kept on going. That’s a great quality to have.
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“The downside of that, what I hope doesn’t become his downfall — he can be, how shall I put this politely, he can be difficult to deal with when he feels treated unjustly. That’s a little bit of a Dutch trait in him, I think. The part where his mentality can work to his benefit, the part where he never gives up, is an American trait.”
Up until now, Dest has gotten the balance mostly right. He stuck with it at Ajax, broke through with the club’s reserve side early in the 2018-19 season, then, after well-regarded academy product and current Bayern Munich defender Noussair Mazraoui suffered an injury later that fall, Dest emerged with the first team. He was a regular starter as Ajax finished first in the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 Eredivisie season, performing well enough to secure a €21 million transfer to Barcelona in October 2020.
It was a dream move for Dest, a longtime Barcelona fan who, according to fellow U.S. defender Chris Richards, showed up to one of his first training camps with the U.S. U-20s wearing a full Barça tracksuit despite the fact that he hadn’t even yet made his senior debut with Ajax.
Things didn’t go all that smoothly for him in Spain, however. He played 30 up-and-down matches in his first campaign, had a famously weird moment in August 2021 in which he showed up to Leo Messi’s farewell press conference straight from the beach and wearing a knockoff Chicago Bulls basketball uniform, then fell out of favor last season after Dutchman Ronald Koeman was fired as manager and replaced by Xavi.
This summer, with the club in financial turmoil, Barça made clear to Dest that he wasn’t in their plans and that they would look to move him elsewhere. For a while, according to a source briefed on the situation, Dest was determined to stay in spite of that stance. He understood that he probably wouldn’t play, but he’s building a house in Spain and enjoyed life in the country. He eventually opted for a season-long loan to Milan that was sealed on the final day of the transfer window, but the fact that he even considered remaining at Barça after the club told him that he wasn’t in line for any minutes was bizarre. For most players, that would have been completely out of the question, particularly in a World Cup year.
Dest, of course, isn’t most players. Though he grew up in a country that prizes functionality and simplicity, he was born and raised in a town that’s different from the national standard. To borrow the line from Kok, on the field, Dest creates art just for the sake of it. To him, there’s plenty of meaning in that.
That approach probably fits better with the U.S. national team than it would with the Netherlands, but it doesn’t mean Dest’s style is a perfect match with that of U.S. head coach Gregg Berhalter, who spent much of his playing career in the Netherlands. He has a system, too, and he’d no doubt like Dest to not stray too far outside of it.
When his freewheeling style works, Dest can be transcendent, generating moments of brilliance like the thunderbolt he scored in the U.S.’s win against Costa Rica during World Cup qualifying last October. When it backfires, like it did in a disengaged performance he had in the U.S.’s qualifier at El Salvador last September, it can cause problems. At the World Cup, where the U.S. could very well end up playing the Netherlands if they advance to the round of 16, the Americans will be hoping Dest finds a way to do what the best players do: Effectively blend his creativity with just a little bit of pragmatism so that he’s both secure and electric.
Dest, Van den Bergh said, is “atypical, regardless of nationality. He’s not typical American, he’s not typical Dutch. You can’t characterize him fully either way. He’s his own person, and he’s in his own world.”
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(Top photo: Daniela Porcelli/ISI Photos/Getty Images)
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