COLUMBUS, Ohio — A spectator at a United States men’s soccer game could have a reasonably enjoyable time simply watching Sergiño Dest as he goes about the business of playing right back.
The 20-year-old Dest’s execution of simple acts on a soccer field — running around, trapping a ball, fiddling with it at his feet, directing it to teammates — oozes style. He has a bottomless tool kit of tricks. He has a marionettist’s control of the ball — and sometimes he has crazy ideas of what to do with it.
For all his skills, the question about Dest — raised by coaches for both the national team and his club, Barcelona — has been if he could assemble all of these gifts and tools and express them consistently as effective performances, if he could avoid mental lapses and maintain his concentration on the field, if he could change games by himself.