City have complete player in Cancelo
JOAO Cancelo knows better than anyone that in football, fortunes can change rather quickly.
In the second half of last season, after the furore around his ‘inverted’ full-back exploits had died down, the City man appeared to lose the confidence of Pep Guardiola. He found himself locked out of his favoured right-back role by Kyle Walker and he sat out both the Champions League semi-final second leg and the final.
Fast-forward to the present day and Cancelo is in the form of his life. He has nailed down a starting berth as City’s left-back (despite being right-footed) and is changing everyone’s perceptions about how the position should be played. Along with Bernardo Silva, he has been City’s best player so far this term.
Easy on the eye and exciting to watch, from a purely statistical perspective his performances have been off the charts. But as the Portugal international revealed to CityTV this week, he doesn’t much care for personal numbers.
“To be honest, I don’t really look at statistics, because I think it hides what a player really does on the pitch”, he said. “I prefer to be a player who is out of the spotlight but who is important for the team.”
We understand where Joao is coming from - it says a lot about his attitude that he wants to deflect praise for himself onto the team as a whole. But he’s wrong; his stats absolutely do show what he does on the pitch.
PASSING MAESTRO
When trying to measure how good a defender is on the ball, pass completion percentages are a pretty useless metric as they include all the safe ten-yard passes between team-mates.
What is telling though is that despite being a defender, Cancelo ranks above every other Premier League player in a num
ber of different passing measures. So far this season, no one has completed more than Cancelo’s 67 passes into the final third of the pitch, meaning he’s an absolutely vital cog in City’s attacking endeavours.
His 25 completed passes into the opponents’ 18-yard box betters Mohamed Salah’s 21, and is only beaten by Bruno Fernandes’ 26.
Given Cancelo’s ability on the ball, perhaps it is not surprising that his team-mates actively want to pass to him; he has been the intended targeted of a pass on 646 occasions this season. Salah is the next most targeted player, with 558.
DEFENSIVELY SOLID
At times there have been questions raised over Cancelo’s defensive capabilities, but in recent times he has improved that side of his game. City’s number 27 leads the charts in terms of interceptions, having intercepted passes on 28 occasions over nine games. That’s an average of 3.11 interceptions per 90 minutes. Last season that figure was down at 2.08.
Even when it comes to tackling, Cancelo is more than holding his own; only eight Premier League defenders have made more than his 20 tackles this season.
Simply put, the idea that Cancelo is a defensively-flawed fullback is a myth.
MASTER OF ALL
Despite his form tailing off towards the end of last season, Cancelo still found himself in a pretty exclusive group.
The 27-year-old became the first Premier League player to average more than two tackles (2.7), more than 1.5 chances created (1.7) and more than 50 successful passes (61.5) per 90 minutes since Cesc Fabregas in 2017/18. To match the figures of a midfield great, while playing in defence, was a frankly outstanding achievement.
What further underlines Cancelo’s unique interpretation of the full-back position is that he’s the only defender among the previous 10 players to hit those combined marks, stretching back to Aaron Ramsey in 2013/14. Based on his per 90 minute stats so far this season, he is right on track to replicate those numbers.
In Cancelo, City clearly have a near-complete footballer, capable of playing in a number of positions due to his excellent technical ability. We reckon he should give himself a bit more credit!