VA VA VOOM!
A French forward who’s joined Arsenal having transformed from rapid winger to deadly striker? The comparisons are obvious, but Alexandre Lacazette could be the closest thing the Gunners have to finally replacing Thierry Henry
The thing you will hear about Alexandre Lacazette over and over – from his brother, from all his coaches at Lyon’s respected Tola Vologe academy and from Remi Garde, who joined OL’S coaching staff just as the 12-year-old Lacazette arrived and later oversaw his first-team evolution – is that he has never been afraid to knuckle down in order to better himself.
“When you talk about intelligence in football, patience is a part of that – he symbolises that,” says Garde. “Instead of thinking it was other people’s fault, he knew how to assess himself and keep working hard.”
Far from the star of his age group, Lacazette was shunted out to the right wing.
“He’s a player that we weren’t really betting on at the start,” Lyon manager Bruno Genesio, who coached the forward in OL’S reserve side at the turn of the decade, has revealed. “He has always grown through adversity. For example, he signed his first pro contract after the others [in his age group], so he deserves all the more praise.”
You might surmise Lacazette would pause for breath after he had established himself in the first team in 2011-12, or in 2013-14 after Garde moved him infield from the wing and the goals began to flow: 22 that season, then 31, 23, and 37 last time out. But each forward step makes him all the more driven. “He has accomplished an enormous amount of individual work during the last two years,” explained his agent, David Venditelli,
HE HAS PLAYED AS THE MAIN MAN, THE SUPPORT ACT AND LONE STRIKER BUT THE GOALS HAVE FLOWED REGARDLESS
in November 2016. “This year, Alex went on holiday to Guadeloupe [from where his family originate] with his three brothers, and a great amount of work was done so he would come back honed for the new season. It’s no accident if he’s leaner and has bulked up his shoulders and arms these last two years.”
Lyon have also put Lacazette through the technical equivalent of Ninja Warrior. Since his conversion to frontman, he’s tackled 4-4-2, 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 setups or, especially last term, an ever-changing assortment. He’s been thrown together with strong centre-forward Bafetimbi Gomis, followed by technical, passing playmaker Nabil Fekir, then commanding dribbler Mathieu Valbuena and finally the direct Claudio Beauvue. And he’s been played as the main man, the support act and the lone striker.
Fekir – who, it is worth noting, is often compared to Mesut Özil – fitted the most snugly into Lacazette’s team-oriented touch game, but the goals have flowed regardless of his partner: Arsene Wenger should have the opportunity to let his new-found sense of tactical adventure run riot in 2017-18.
That move from the flank to centre-forward has attracted obvious comparisons to Thierry Henry, but ex-france coach Gerard Houllier has spoken of similarities with another Gunners legend in Ian Wright. The former goal-getter, who scored 185 times for the north London outfit from 1991-98, likes what he has seen from the 26-year-old.
“As a striker, you’ve got to have that swagger and he seems very confident,” Wright, himself no shrinking violet, tells FFT. “In the last three seasons he’s scored 20-plus league goals, so why wouldn’t he be? People say that it’s only Ligue 1, but consistency is consistency, whatever league you play in.”
Indeed, Lyon striking maestro Sonny Anderson believed that the free-scoring Lacazette was lurking near the perimeter of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi’s celestial sphere, his progress hidden in the backwater of Ligue 1. Bernard Lacombe, a Lyon director and the league’s second-highest scorer of all-time, lauds Lacazette’s “regal” touch and decision-making. He claims Lacazette was to Lyon what Zlatan Ibrahimovic was to Paris Saint-germain, snaffling up all of the average passes and spitting out goals and assists: he scored or assisted nearly half of OL’S goals after moving from the wing.
The French press have extracted endless comparisons from Lyon’s coaching staff with Karim Benzema, the last Tola Vologe graduate to go galactic. Lyon’s under-17 coach Armand Garrido says: “Alex has that bit extra when it comes to keeping possession and link-up play. And he is perhaps shrewder than Karim.”
Lacazette’s debut goal from his first touch in open play seemed like just another loop de loop in a frenetic Arsenal-leicester game, but it was actually characteristic: of the frontmen who scored more than 20 goals in Europe’s big five leagues last season (Messi, Ronaldo and Tottenham Hotspur talisman Harry Kane included), Lacazette’s shot conversion rate (33 per cent) was highest.
Only four days after the mysteriously sceptical France coach Didier Deschamps left Lacazette out of his squad in the run up to Euro 2016, Lacazette scored a hat-trick in the last derby against Saint-etienne at the Stade de Gerland. He was the first scorer at Lyon’s new Stade des Lumieres. When Lyon had to beat Monaco to claim an automatic Champions League spot in May 2016, Lacazette delivered a hat-trick. When he needed to score a brace to reach 100 league goals for Lyon, the beloved club of his boyhood, he did.
When the pressure has been cranked up, he has not wilted. Just as well, given Arsenal’s No.9 shirt has weighed rather heavily on many of those to have worn it – in fact, no player wearing the number has managed to score a dozen league goals in a single season since fellow Frenchman Nicolas Anelka notched 17 in 1998-99.
But Wright does not think Lacazette will be unduly concerned. “I’m not sure someone who’s scoring goals with that regularity is worried about coming to a club where No.9 hasn’t been a very good number,” he shrugs. “It’s the last thing you think about.”
Given it took the striker a mere 94 seconds to get off the mark for the Gunners, it’s a fair assumption.