Last summer, in order to make up for the huge gap in the team's attacking core Griezmann left Barca. Atletico recruited then-19-year-old striker João Felix from Benfica for a record transfer fee of €126 million. After a brief highlight at the beginning of the season, Mr. Golden Boy seems to have quickly lost his magic and fallen into the ongoing problems of ball shortages and injuries. Far from meeting the expectations of the team's top brass and fans, Felix was questioned and under pressure. But the future is full of variables, and the little digger today presented a manual of Atletico's golden boy Felix through the detailed data analysis of the 2:2 Sevilla match in La Liga, interpreting how Felix should open the door to conquer the Wanda Metropolitan?
Felix's prowess is beyond doubt
Felix is the typical striker. When he first entered the international football scene, his extraordinary flexibility and passing ability made him known as the "new generation of Kaka". Nowadays, the technical requirements of the frontcourt players are getting higher and higher, and the types of centers are also from the pile-type fulcrum center to the small and fast technical center of Lautaro, which is flexibly used according to various tactics. The level of the striker is no longer a single goal-scoring ability to interpret everything. From the perspective of play and technical characteristics, excellent passing ability makes Felix often active in the hidden forward position between the center and the midfield, completing the tandem role at the same time, but also like a poisonous snake can complete a fatal blow. Felix, who has a lingbo micro-step, will dance with long sleeves.
Felix's statistics for the last four games are gradually shining
Judging by Felix's recent performance, the overall upward trend is very clear, which conveys a very clear signal: the questioned Atletico Golden Boy is fully capable of playing high-quality matches to help the team win. Assists and goals are both abundant, in addition to giving deadly passes in the hidden forward position to create opportunities for teammates, the nature of the forward killer gives him the ability to rely on flexible running positions to complete a fatal blow. In the home draw with Sevilla, with Felix's key goal, Atletico avoided consecutive winless games in La Liga. Dexterous running and pulling ability and excellent ability to shoot the ball have allowed Atletico Madrid, who mainly defends and counterattack, to obtain a very good explosive point in the frontcourt, but his poor physical confrontation ability is also a double-edged sword.
Felix had the highest rating on the field
Atletico's defensive counterattack 4-4-2 formation has been used for a long time, and for the solid defensive system that has been formed, the team's midfield must objectively and subjectively adapt to such a defensive system and make the biggest concessions within the feasible range, and the full defense is a very good example. Felix played one of the double strikers in the team, standing close to the midfield, involved in the 4-4-4-2 system as a layered forward position of 4-4-1-1, through passing and running position, enjoying the highest degree of freedom in the front court, flexibly playing his own escape and transmission ability, to ensure that the team does not appear to be out of touch with the dilemma of attack and defense. Facing Felix, who has a clear length, how to grow long sleeves with him has become the key question of how Simone can help Felix shine. We dig deeper with the help of big data analytics to find Felix's instruction manual.
The striker's first task is to threaten the opponent's goal, no other than shooting and key passes or assists. For Atletico, which has been based on the defensive counter-attack tactical system for many years, the reason why they can achieve historic breakthroughs in the Champions League and even La Liga in previous years is due to their extraordinary ability to grasp opportunities in the core of their forward counterattack. Atletico's key players in the front often need to have a higher degree of freedom of the front than their teammates who are united in their defense, which is very evident in the former Torres, Aguero, Diego Costa and Griezmann. Felix, as the team's introduction to replace Griezmann's vacant counter-attack point, has a very good shooting conversion ability, and the resolute shooting in the counterattack has played a very good protective role for the team's resilience. Averaging 2.5 shots per game is a great example for the hidden forwards.
Felix La Liga match attacking stats
Atletico are not teams that play simply and seek to exchange the number of shots for quality, the five major leagues are like the five gates, each with its own mainstream tactics. In La Liga, the Spanish football system emphasizes small ball coordination and precise transmission characteristics are very obvious in all levels of the team, so it is often seen that teams such as Levante at the bottom of the league table can also play a very good small range of passing in front of strong real Madrid or Barcelona. This is also the reason why players with fast East Asian technical characteristics such as Wu Lei and Kubo Kenei can adapt to the La Liga arena relatively well, and therefore, La Liga is also a very ideal choice for Asian players to stay abroad. Felix is the best frontcourt engine adapted to Atletico's low-shot attack, and his excellent ability to get rid of and shoot has improved the team's ability to convert shots. Against Sevilla, Felix's three-foot shots all hit the frame and scored crucial goals, which was a very good example of the offensive ability of the front.
The shooting route of the two teams in this game, the yellow line is Felix's shooting line
Felix's sense of smell in front of goal is very sensitive, and this goal is a visual reflection of his ability to run and seize opportunities. On this counter-attack, Kork, who had been holding the ball in the middle, had a running overlap, and Felix very timely observed that Morata on the right side had successfully run to a reasonable position and took away two defenders, bypassing the defenders and running out of the excellent direct pass gap. This is a turn-back running position, and the player's on-field adaptability and physical coordination require the most reasonable choice and physical response in a very short period of time. Cork's straight ball to the left pinpointed Felix, who received the ball and adjusted, hitting a fatal blow. In atletico counter-attacking in a three-on-five mode of playing less and playing more, Felix's interspersing ability, ability to get rid of and shoot will have a chance to shine.
Felix's running chart for the goal of this game
Felix's offensive prowess is unquestionable. We often say that Maxima is common and Bole is not, and for Felix, who already has 20 goals and 11 assists in 43 games in Portugal, what is needed is a Maxima-type team tactic built for him. He has the technical characteristics of appearing and showing his frontcourt elves when the team needs to run, pull the gap, get rid of the ball, complete the shot, etc. For a team built on the DNA of defensive counterattack, The entire Team can give him the opportunity to show and grant him the highest degree of offensive freedom, so as to maximize the strengths and avoid weaknesses, and transform Felix's "spirit" into "zero" of the team's scoring ability.
Positioned as a stand-in for Griezmann, this is the "primary goal" of fans and clubs after Felix first entered Atletico, although in terms of the data and offensive finishing ability presented so far, Felix and his "predecessors" still have a big gap, but the atletico golden boy has the organizational offensive ability can not be underestimated, find his own instruction manual, it will burst out of a very powerful force. For today's Atletico Madrid, even if it sits on the first-class defense line in Europe and adheres to the 4-3-3 counterattack system, La Liga giants Atletico Madrid also have their own model in terms of skills and midfield combing ability. Now Felix is playing the role of a midfielder who can run and shoot well in the front and dribble in the midfield, with a very broad vision and excellent ability to play the ball, he single-handedly helps the team build the axis of the midfield and complete the combing of the attack.
Felix organizational capability data
For La Liga teams, whether they have strong midfield control or not, the flow of technology and the sense of cooperation are the muscular memory of every player who grows up under such a system. Therefore, if you want to find Felix's instruction manual, you must first make a fuss about the stimulation of the scope of activity in his front field. The image below shows the heat map of Felix's full-time activity in this match against Sevilla. It's worth noting that whether as a forward player defined as a double center or a stealth player behind a center, Felix appears in a midfield position that doesn't perfectly match his position. This shows that his range of activities is very large, very mobile, able to use his passing ability to create very good opportunities for teammates in various positions, 79% of the pass success rate and 5 excellent scoring opportunities reflect his delicacy under the "rough" framework of Atletico, in addition to the violent aesthetic of the attack there are thick and fine organization of the series.
Felix full-game activity heat map
Any transition between offense and defense requires a systematic core player to complete a high-speed, high-quality transition. The process of the midfielders doing their part, completing the transition and providing support to the players in the front is often referred to as "defensive counterattack". Felix's ability to play counter-attacks and one-on-one breakthroughs added to the way he organized his attack, delivering a three-pass-high in the game, which very well accelerated Atletico's smooth handling of the ball up front, making the team's progress from backfield to midfield to frontcourt running smoothly and efficiently. Atletico is not a meticulous team, but unlike a team in the Bundesliga like Red Bull Leipzig, which exchanges offensive quantity for offensive quality, for Atletico, who pays attention to offensive efficiency, Felix's ability to create opportunities in the front directly determines the success rate of offensive and defensive conversion and offensive conversion into goals. The ability to get rid of the dexterity makes Felix's ability to hold the ball and pass the ball as trustworthy.
Felix had the highest number of performances in this game
Felix's passing ability is strong, strong in the selection of gaps and timing of straight-passing, and this ability is not at all lost to many good midfielders. Below the pass moment map, we see that Felix has three days of very clear passing routes, the left side of the pass to the teammates on the edge of the least difficult, but also a very common route choice, it is easier to grasp the timing of the pass. The choice on the right side requires the use of long passes, and the start of the teammates is obviously not very timely, and the turnover rate is very high. The midfield straight to Morata, who already has a tendency to insert, is the most difficult, and the passing timing is the most difficult to grasp, but it is also the best chance. Felix not only completed all the line analysis and calculation of the possibilities in the instant of the electric flint, but also chose the best passing time, and completed the high-quality pass, giving the right amount of advance, creating a good opportunity for Morata to score later, in this moment, he is the embodiment of the midfield master.
Felix passed the moment roadmap
What do forward players need? Guardiola will give the answer, pass the ability to cooperate; Klopp will give the answer, counter-attack the ability to oppress. Then for Atletico Madrid, Simeone will take his apprentice Felix to tell the world that the front line not only has the ability to finish, but also has "the self-cultivation of midfielders". Felix has an extraordinary ability to shoot and finish, giving him enough firing rights will create a lot of opportunities, Felix also has a very good vision and passing ability, once given a very high degree of freedom in the front court, such a player will play a beautiful football, turn the football into a work of art, which is Felix's well-deserved "instruction manual".
Felix is a player with distinctive characteristics, which has almost become the consensus of the industry. Characteristics - meaning that people or things have special or special places, this is the interpretation given by modern Chinese dictionaries, which is doomed to have good and bad characteristics, and has to use their strengths and avoid weaknesses to exert their greatest benefits. It is also a consideration of a manager's ability to develop players and create the professionalism of suitable tactics. Felix's weakness is that he has a height of 178cm but only weighs less than 75kg, and his body is thin. If Felix's dexterous running ability and excellent ability to play the ball are "ordinary" Atletico's poetry and distance, then the lack of hardness caused by the weak physical confrontation ability, the lack of frontal conflict in the midfield is the "immediate gouge" that the entire Team must help Mr. Golden Boy to face and solve, which is the "side effect" that must be noted in this manual.
The number of physical confrontation successes in the whole game, Felix has zero
La Liga is not a league system with physical confrontation as the key competitive skill of the game, which is very obvious in the comparison between the physical confrontation data and the Premier League, but the use of physical advantages is the basic competitive element in the field of football. Even Messi, who is not tall, can still use his speed dexterity and strong body core strength to maintain the fluency of his ball and the efficiency of holding the ball when facing a powerful center-back who is tall and powerful. Felix did not gain an advantage in any of the physical confrontations against Sevilla in this match, and Morata, who played the double center position with him, was three successful confrontations, bringing a strong impact to Sevilla's defense, but this impact was lacking in Felix, which made him often unable to gain an advantage in the midfield struggle.
In this game, the interception steal data, Atletico's midfield is full of hardness
"Side effects" require side effects, and Simeone's choice of personnel and tactics is the performance of reading Felix's instruction manual, that is, allowing midfielders to provide maximum hardness and physical confrontation support, and achieve the advantage of local confrontation. Atletico's three stable midfielders are combined with Koch, Llorente and Saul, each player has a very good ability to play the ball, and Kork was once considered the midfield brain of Xavi's successor in the Spanish national team, and all three contributed very unified "high confrontation" and "high interception" data. The midfield combination and tactical choice of these three people have greatly helped Felix solve the disadvantage of insufficient confrontation in the midfield, playing the role of "thug" to solve the "immediate stubbornness", which can be said to be the best treatment for side effects.
This game, three midfielders of the full-court heat map
The activities of the three midfielders are very unified and concentrated, with Felix's side concentrated in the rear midfield position, taking the identity of the hitman to the extreme. As a result, Felix was completely released in the front, passing, shooting and breaking through, playing a high-quality match for his new generation of golden boy status.
Felix is a piece of jade, and if you want to shine, you must find his manual to pan for gold in the waves. It's no surprise that Simeone tapped into Felix's offensive abilities, tapped into the potential of passing, getting rid of and creating chances, in other words, it was just Felix cashing in on his talent. For Simone, it is the "instruction manual" for Felix to carefully design the personnel to solve the disadvantages caused by physical confrontation, and to overcome the side effects and maximize the value.
Good players need good instructions, and this iron law has been repeatedly fulfilled in the history of football. Players with super personal ability and mental attributes like C Ronaldo have proved their perfect adaptability to the top giants of the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and almost the entire European arena, and this kind of genius cannot be used as a model for most clubs to build players after reinforcements. Felix can be pinned on the world to become Ronaldo's successor in the Portuguese national team, positioned as Griezmann's replacement at Atletico, many realities have shown his unborn super talent, our big data analysis is to present his talent in three dimensions, but also exposed his distinct weaknesses, such players are personality players, angular, need Bó Lè to bring their own spring.
Therefore, unlike the golden oil players, unlike the talented players of the all-round God of War, the personality player is a double-edged sword at the same time, but also the touchstone of the manager's ability to adjust the players. Felix has a keen forward killer nature, has a waist vision and passing ability, and granting him the highest freedom to attack the whole game will greatly release his offensive talent. However, his weak physical fitness makes him unable to solve the battle on his own, and he needs to play the role of "thug" with "dirty work and tired shoulders". Such a player with distinct technical characteristics, coach Simeone naturally loves and hates, find Felix's instruction manual, reasonable personnel collocation will make Atletico go further, Felix really shine.
Whether Felix can get close to the predecessor big brother - C Luo, the future can be expected
In fact, football is like life, life is also football, find the right "manual", will be like a bright star, with buds to be released.