A product of Barcelona’s La Masia academy, Simons moved to Paris St-Germain in 2019 as a teenager before impressing during a loan spell at PSV in 2022-23.<\/p>\n
He would spend the next two seasons at Leipzig, scoring 22 goals and providing 24 assists in 78 games across all competitions for the German side.<\/p>\n
He would be the second major transfer from Leipzig to the Premier League this summer, following Benjamin Sesko’s move to Manchester United in a deal worth \u00a373.7m.<\/p>\n
Named Xavi, after the former Barcelona and Spain midfielder, Simons has long been one of the most sought-after players in Europe.<\/p>\n
Simons quickly became a gem in the Catalan giants’ esteemed academy after joining aged seven, and was recognised far beyond it.<\/p>\n
By the time he was 14, Simons boasted more than a million Instagram followers, a contract with Nike and had starred in an advert alongside Neymar and Ronaldinho.<\/p>\n
Yet at 16, Simons’ career trajectory took a huge detour. Having failed to reach an agreement with Barcelona he joined PSG, following in the footsteps of his idol Neymar – saying the Brazilian looked after him like a “little brother”.<\/p>\n
At 17, in February 2021, he made his debut but further opportunities were limited and, by the end of the following season, Simons had accumulated just 11 senior appearances in all competitions.<\/p>\n
He went in search of regular football.<\/p>\n
A versatile prospect who operates on either wing or behind the striker and speaks six languages, he has already been linked with the likes of Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Bayern Munich, but appears to have now got his move to the Premier League.<\/p>\n
He has made 28 appearances for the Netherlands, having become the country’s youngest player to feature in the knockout stages of the World Cup when he made his debut against the USA in Qatar in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A product of Barcelona’s La Masia academy, Simons moved to Paris St-Germain in 2019 as a teenager before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-104489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}