sport news Erik ten Hag thought to be 'actively monitoring the progress of American Taylor ... trends now
He is the new kid on the block. Another American who used the Bundesliga as his right of passage and now could be heading to these shores with Manchester United boss Erik ten Hag among his admirers.
Like Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams and Christian Pulisic before him, Taylor Booth always dreamed of making it big in Europe.
Spotted in the US by Bundesliga scouts, he was invited for trials at Bayern Munich as a 17-year old. It helped he had an Italian passport, courtesy of his father Chad's heritage, but Booth’s route to the top has had its challenges.
While he learned his trade under Julian Nagelsmann and trained alongside luminaries such as Robert Lewandowski, the young midfielder's first team pathway was never going to be easy, navigating past Bayern's stars.
So last year Booth took the bold step to leave. Bayern made him multiple offers to extend his contract and ultimately weren't happy that he opted to turn down those advances in favour of signing a pre-contract with FC Utrecht in Holland.
American Taylor Booth is attracting interest after improving his game with FC Utrecht
Erik ten Hag is thought to be monitoring Booth's progress, and may bring him to Man United
Burnley, in the Premier League at the time, and Portuguese clubs had previously shown interest, yet he was advised the Dutch league was a better platform for his technical skills to develop.
Utrecht have never been relegated from the Dutch Eredivisie and is where United boss Ten Hag played and later coached. Indeed, Ten Hag still has strong ties to the club so is well informed on Booth's capabilities and is believed to be actively monitoring his progress with the 21-year old impressing so far.
In this, his first full season, Booth has already established himself as a crowd favourite having made just 16 appearances, scoring twice and assisting three times. He was named Eredivisie player of the month in November, has been named in Eredevisie Team of the Week on multiple occasions and now the US U19 international is being tipped to earn his first full cap for the States - although Italy could yet stake a claim.
When quizzed on where his national team loyalties lie Booth, who was called up to a USA senior national team’s camp in December 2021, laughed: 'USA or Italy? Difficult to say categorically at this point because I’ve never been put into a situation where I’ve had to choose. If Italy
