Barça’s latest market movement has ended with the arrival of Joao Félix to the Barça discipline. The Portuguese arrives on loan and with the intention of vindicating everything that was sensed about him and that he has barely taught continuously. Here my tactical analysis:
If we only talk about football, the Portuguese is a very classy player. And if we had to define his ideal position, this would be midfielder. That player who, without having the obligation to be on top permanently, moves close to the decisive area of ??the field. His irruption at Benfica occurred as second point in a 4-4-2 and during these years at Atlético his best performances have come from playing behind a leading striker. This is his heat map of the 2021-2022 season, in which he offered his best rojiblanco performance:
In Xavi’s Barça, his ideal position can be guessed as a false winger both in the inner square system and in a pure 4-3-3.
Technical quality is its greatest strength. And it is that it is literally overflowing with resources. Because he not only has a talent for all technical gestures, but he is also very quick to improvise in midplay. Spontaneous dribbling, oriented controls, dry cuts and even pipes are part of the way he plays. He has the instinct that he acquired in the short but first stage in which he played futsal before entering the Porto school.
Another of its virtues is ball protection. Use your body skillfully. He puts his trunk between the opponent and the ball with great naturalness. He knows how to use protection to win duels with the ball. That is the main explanation for why he is one of the offensive players who takes the most fouls on the European scene. With Portugal he averages 2 forced fouls per game in the rival field in this 2023 and, in his best season as a mattress player (2021-2022), this record rose to 2.4 per game.
High capacity for the most difficult passes: the last or the penultimate. See the cracks immediately and perform the appropriate technical gesture so that it reaches the site. 81% of those who try reach their destination. Remarkable record. His soccer figure presents some doubts but, in this, he can add without a doubt.
Play with the opposing lines. He doesn’t wear himself out trying to get rid of the mark but instead lets it pull back to create the gap. His unchecking goes in the opposite direction of defensive inertia and that is precisely why he gives the impression that he finds very easy reception zones. It is evident that he is a footballer used to discovering the way to intervene in these hot areas of the game. 77% of his interventions are in the three quarters of the field.
Perhaps this is the most differential point of the Portuguese. You can sync tasks that are not easy to combine. He has a high capacity to protect the ball while directing the ball towards the best starting space or to carry out something really difficult to do, driving fast while raising his head to get a panoramic view (see composition). He is spectacular in coordinating close harassment.
He is not a goalscorer but he is a footballer with a certain dose of goal. And it is that he knows how to apply that point of tranquility necessary for decision making. He stops and watches before choosing the way to finish. He changes precipitation for serenity and this gives him a plus of success towards the opposite goal. Already in his first start with Benfica in September 2018, he scored after 34 minutes. At 19 years and 152 days, he is the youngest footballer to score a Europa League hat trick against Eintracht Frankfurt. At Atlético he has gone through streaks. For example, in the 2021-2022 season he scored nine goals in the 1,841 minutes he played.
Until today, João Félix has been more of a player of stellar moments or matches than a regular high-performance footballer. And that is not only the main handicap that it presents, but also the great doubt about it. Something that is, in turn, the great challenge of the new Barça attacker.
You need and require carte blanche to move. Receiving into space or with the ball at his feet, he finds situations so that the individual scenario ends up being the one he seeks regardless of his starting point on the pitch. And that partially conditions the team.
He is sacrificed in terms of positioning but he has to improve his spirits due to the pressure. He is used to fulfilling his positional responsibilities but not in terms of the intention to recover. Although it is not the function that is expected of him, the defensive intensity is for now much lower than the aggressiveness that he shows when he has the ball in attack. Here has always been the main difference with Simeone at Atlético.
