Football

Xavi Simons re-joins RB Leipzig on season-long loan: 'He's a great player, a great person and fits perfectly'

Published

2m ago

Aug 06, 2024 / 6687 Views

Evan Walker

Xavi Simons has officially re-joined RB Leipzig for the 2024-25 season, signing a new season-long loan from Paris Saint-Germain on Monday.

The player completed his medical and trained alone on Monday, but will train with his teammates on Tuesday, when the squad convenes after completing their first-ever preseason tour of the U.S. last week. It was at the start of that tour when head coach Marco Rose said that Simons decided to return to the German club for another season, though he recognized at the time that the deal had yet to be formalized.

Simons, a promising midfielder who many hope will become a fixture at PSG sooner rather than later, initially joined Leipzig ahead of the 2023-24 season on a loan deal and impressed during his first spell at the club. He scored 10 goals and notched 13 assists in 43 Games, playing a crucial role on a team that finished fourth in the Bundesliga and made it to the round of 16 in last season's UEFA Champions League, being eliminated by eventual winners Real Madrid. Simons' performances were strong enough for him to earn a spot on the Netherlands' roster for the Euros, scoring once and registering three assists in six starts for the semifinalists.

The 21-year-old is set to be welcomed back with open arms in Leipzig after carving out a big role for himself last season.

"He's a great player and a great person and fits perfectly into our group," Yussuf Poulsen told CBS Sports last week, shortly after Rose's comments. "That's probably also why, because I think he had to take some steps himself to actually be able to be here one more year and that also shows his commitment to the group."

Simons' promise has been evident since he made his professional debut for PSG at 17 years old, but Peter Gulasci said that his professionalism stood out just as much as his talent did during his first season at Leipzig.

"If you don't know him personally or you didn't get the chance to work with him, there's a big hype around him, of course, being such a young talent but when you get to know him day by day, he's really hard working and dedicating everything to football," Gulasci said. "His whole life is set up to perform on the pitch and that just shows the commitment, what he has towards football and like Yussi said, towards our team and if that happens, of course, he's a very important player for us and we're happy to have him hopefully back with us."

Simons is expected to play a big role yet again for Leipzig, who have high aspirations next season. A young team was notably inconsistent and fell out of the top three after finishing that high a year earlier, but Poulsen and Gulasci hope the experience this group now has playing together will offer enough stability to improve upon last season's showing.

"They can also see what kind of potential we have in the team and how, in some periods and in some games, we reach a level that is on the top level in Europe ad then we go out the next weekend and are not able to put that performance in one more time," Poulsen said. "That's often also the downside of having a young squad, that it can be difficult to create that stability all the time."

Intriguingly, Simons could mark his return to Leipzig by playing in the team's preseason friendly against PSG on Saturday. Regardless, he is expected to play a role once their season begins on Aug. 17 with a first round DFB Pokal match against Essen. Their Bundesliga campaign kicks off the following week against Bochum.