FanHouse DannySzetela

Here at Soccer FanHouse, we had big hopes Danny Szetela, one of the many impressive youngsters on the U.S. U-20 side that performed so well at the U-20 World Cup last summer. When he moved from the Columbus Crew to Spanish club Racing de Santander last summer, we thought it might be the start of something big for him.

Alas, he hasn't been able to crack the starting lineup at Racing this season, save for one Copa del Rey match. (Copa del Rey is about as well-respected in Spain as the U.S. Open Cup is here.) Seeing as the 20-year-old midfielder is more desperate for first-team action than Benny Feilhaber at this point, Racing has decided to loan him out to Italian Serie B club Brescia for the rest of the season.

Brescia is currently sixth on the Serie B table, eight points clear of an automatic promotion spot. The top two finishers in Serie B are automatically promoted to Serie A, while clubs that finish 3rd through 6th go through a playoff to determine the final promotion. If Szetela can help get this club promoted, that would be a huge notch on his belt.

Hey, Brescia, any chance can you talk to Derby County about a loan deal for Feilhaber, too? We don't need any more of our midfielders riding the pine.

(H/T: Soccer by Ives)

A few weeks ago, word broke about Danny Szetela, one of the wonder boys from the U.S. under-20 men's national team, moving from the Columbus Crew to AS Roma. Well, it seems we may have counted our chickens before they hatched ...

After nearly two months of transfer speculation and negotiations, Danny Szetela has passed up offers from Roma and Newcastle (among others) to play for Spanish First Division side Racing de Santander.

Szetela, who scored three goals for the U.S. U-20 national team in July's U-20 World Cup, has signed a three-year deal with the Northern Spain-based club, which began the La Liga season in solid fashion by tying Barcelona last weekend.

Racing is probably be a much better club for Szetela than Roma. He would have had an extremely tough time seeing first-team action for a club expected to dominate Serie A and go through to the knockout stage in the Champions League. Clearly, he knew this, too, as reports indicate he accepted a deal at Racing that was worth less money so that he could see more first-team action. He probably wouldn't have seen that much action at Newcastle, either, and in Spain, there's no risk of him getting beat up by Joey Barton for no reason.

The most interesting part of this deal? Racing paid Columbus a transfer fee of only $150,000 to get Szetela. Considering Fulham paid $4 million for Clint Dempsey and Benfica paid $2 million for Freddy Adu, Racing may have gotten the steal of the summer transfer market.

Ives Galarcep is reporting that Columbus Crew defensive midfielder and USMNT U-20 star Danny Szetela is outtta heeeerrre effective at the end of the year or earlier, and the departure destination is a shockingly huge club:

AS Roma is set to sign Danny Szetela to a three-year contract worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 to 1.5 million, which doesn't include the housing and car he will also receive from the Italian club. The details of the move have been finalized and, at this point, all that remains is for Szetela to fly to Rome to sign the deal.

Adding to the shocking hugeness of the thing is Galarcep's suggestion that the deal was publicly questioned because the other major suitor was Roma's local rival Lazio.

There is no friggin' way Szetela, who struggled with injury and clashed with coaches in three years in MLS, steps right into Serie A and plays regularly, especially at a team coming off a season in which they won the Coppa Italia, finished second in the league, and reached the quarterfinals of the Champions League. (Roma also has what's probably the most disturbing emblem in all of soccer, and certainly the only one that features wolf teats.) He'll probably spend the year in the reserves or maybe find a loan move. Still, a move to Roma speaks to Szetela's talent, and along with the Adu move to Benfica calls MLS' youth development strategies into question. The influx of young American talent into big clubs across Europe bodes well for the World Cup in 2010... if any of them can find the field.

USA U20 midfielder Danny Szetela had an excellent U20 World Cup, scoring three goals and clogging up a wide array of opponent attacks. Conveniently for Szetela, his MLS contract expires this winter and he is in possession of a Polish passport. He can go to any European side he wants without the Crew getting involved, and it appears that's exactly what's transpiring. Szetela's agent, Shep Messing, breaks down the contenders:

"It's come down so far to two teams who are in the front: Celtic in Scotland and Siena in Italy," the former Cosmos star told American Soccer Daily.

"We have had calls from Hertha Berlin and Munich 1860, in Italy, Parma; in England, Everton, Middlesbrough and Reading. And Valencia in Spain."

Celtic, of course, is part of the Old Firm with Rangers; the pair dominates the Scottish league on a yearly basis. Siena is a Serie A team with scanty history constantly on the verge of relegation. Szetela has a choice between stability and the challenge of Serie A; given that he's failed to break into the starting eleven of the Columbus Crew it might be advisable to start slowly. Realistically, Szetela is probably going to spend a lot of time in the reserves or on loan in the next year or two. He may as well do that if he can't even get the one thing MLS is supposed to offer young up-and-comers: playing time.