Sergi Roberto: The transformation

-By Adi

Just to justify the title and put things in perspective, Sergi Roberto started 12 games all of last season averaging 42 minutes in the games that he did start; and was seen as a player who graduated through the La Masia trying to replace commonplace names like Iniesta and Xavi.This little tribute to him tries to analyze why he has ‘looked’ unstoppable on the pitch this season i.e. what he’s doing differently from the last campaign.

As an obvious starting point, the injury list ‘pile-up’ in the Barca camp forced the usage of the ‘graduates’ onto first team action.

Thus entered Sergi Roberto.

The full back shortage caused some major problems for Lucho. In such a critical moment, you have to give credit to the man who was gutsy enough to trust a kid with a RB role: The same kid who subbed in for Messi, up top, at one point. Tip of the hat to you, Lucho. What ensued was a seamless fit and stability whenever Sergi Roberto was on the pitch. From here, pushing him to his natural habitat as a CM wasn’t an issue at all. Once Dani Alves was back, further injury issues in midfield required Roberto’s services as a fix. As if the shift in position wasn’t enough shock, how about replacing Iniesta’s feet?

Sergi Roberto saw these holes to be fixed, stepped up, adapted his game quite spectacularly and gave Lucho a selection headache instead.

The previous season:

The numbers from last season clearly indicate that he was given a completely different role all of last season. He saw much of the ball in midfield and was given the responsibility of rotating it and holding on to it. He obliged like a topper in a class averaging ~81 passes with a pass-accuracy of 95% (every 90 minutes). To further confirm his role, he was averaging 2.11 interceptions per 90 minutes; better than…..Busquets (1.8 – Granted Busquets’ average is taken over exponentially many more minutes. In fact, this kid did better with the 1st two stats too when compared to Busquets)!

Fast forward to this season:

He averages ~55 passes per 90 minutes and has a 87% completion rate. So, what changed? His role. From someone ‘who holds possession and makes sure that it is with Barca’ to a more creative ‘do something with the ball while you’re switching boxes’. Yes, he did start 3 games at RB; but he’s now averaging 82 minutes per game among the 9 games that he has featured => he has 6 games under his belt with his new role – a box to box midfielder. On paper, he was listed as a CM in the ongoing season and the last one. But, what is visible as flair to the naked eye, specific to this season, has clearly gone through a lot of training drills and some amazing adaptive abilities on Sergi’s part to realize it. This stat is what sets the two seasons apart: The number of successful take-ons has jumped from a stable 44.4% to a ‘put your dancing shoes on’ 69.2% (dun dunn dunnn). None of this is to say he had a bad season last time; it just goes on to show and reiterate his new role. Numbers aside, just watching him play there and gliding the ball across with a Xavi-esque touch shows just how much he enjoys it. This is mostly what he was bred for in the La Masia right?

There is only one stat that goes against this hypothesis. His number of forward passes dropped from 51.7 to 29.1 (every 90 minutes). But then, intuitively, the reasoning is, if you’re already sitting back and rotating possession, you tend to pass forward more than back. I’m just saying this to ease my sleep at night. Also, the number of chances he creates increases my sleep hours. 0.9 per 90 minutes this season to last one’s 0.7. Keep in mind that he started as a full-back for almost a third of the games that he has played.

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Now, having made it pretty evident that he has made a decent transformation, let’s try to look at how important a cog he is in the Barca wheel. The heat maps shown below are as follows: 1. A conventional right back, 2. A box to box midfielder and 3. A box to box midfielder…again.

Apart from his touches decreasing to an extent, the 3rd one resembles Ramires’ heat map from any game in the 2013-14 season. Guess what, Barca lost that game 4-0.

Moving onto the 2nd heat map, you would probably guess that he was allowed to take the ball forward to the final third, and was being found in the final third, a lot more. 3-0 to Barca in that game.

This is not to say that he was responsible for the drubbing at the hands of Bilbao, but that the two events share a connection. Chaos. Barca’s stability and his are somehow entwined when he’s on the pitch as a CM. Right-back, is a completely different story. That is a pretty damn substantial role in my eyes.

As a conclusion, just when there were enough talks floating about Barca becoming ’just another buying club’, a spark like this shows up to disprove some theories. It’s just a pleasure when your own graduates make you proud. The big picture aside, Barca have at their disposal, a brand new utility player with a preference. He’s definitely worth the wait.

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