Szetela Rejects Roma, Newcastle for Spain

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.