Former Barcelona right-back reveals his experience in the turbulent period of the club
He reached the elite with Barça but, somehow, Sergiño Dest had to start over. His promising performances at Ajax led him to sign for the Catalan giants, but the general instability of the club was punishing his performance as a Culé until he had to leave when he did not fit into Xavi's plans. Back in the Eredivisie, the winger has regained his best form at PSV Eindhoven, where he was a regular for Peter Bosz until he suffered a serious knee injury last April.
You arrived at Barça at a turbulent time at the institutional level. How do you assess your time as a Culé?
It was an incredible and wonderful experience. I will always carry Barça in my heart. It was a shame that it had to end like that because I felt I could still be useful to the club. But when a new coach arrives and has his ideas, you can't change them.
The feeling you gave is that you landed with a lot of self-confidence and 'spark' but little by little you lost confidence.
I agree, I arrived 'flying', I wanted to show, to play... and things were going well for me individually. But in the end I was new here, my teammates didn't know me... In the end I have a style in which I often take risks with the ball but here I was asked to play a different game. That made me lose some confidence in my decisions, doubts about whether you should be yourself or change your style and those doubts end up hurting your performance.
Do you have any regrets?
I wouldn't say I regret it, because in the end it was something that didn't depend on me, but I don't feel I had the necessary opportunities with Xavi. I felt I had to play with limits, that I wasn't myself. I wanted to join the attack, because that is my greatest virtue, but he asked me not to go up.
What happened between you and Xavi?
I think he was NOT honest with me. We had several conversations in which he told me one thing but then I doubted if it was really true. In the summer, before going on vacation, he told me “I'm counting on you, don't read the press”. And as soon as I came back, he told me “you have to go”.