After the massive undertaking that was poring through the new treasure trove of StatsBomb supplied data at FB Ref, I wanted to hone in on a few players who caught my eye and try a few comparison tools out.

First off, here are the total team recaps I wrote

La Liga

Bundesliga

Premier League

Ligue 1 and Serie A

We come to Real Madrid and Vinicius Junior.

Age: 19

TM Value: 45 million.

Position: FWL

Nation: Brazil 🇧🇷

Contract Until: 2025

Technical details below

Recap

I had assumed Vinicius was just pretty good. The few times I’d watched Real Madrid he’d looked exciting but I hadn’t noticed him in cursory twitter following or massive production overall. That’s changed now. Now I think he could be the cornerstone of Brazil for years to come. I definitely did not think he’d be so high on that first category, what % of touches come in the box. This then drives his field tilt so high as well. It’s somewhat odd that his xG + xA isn’t even higher.

The yardage he consumes is just massive and unlike anyone else who gets into the box so often. His xA has spiked from .13 to .23 this year but he still isn’t creating that much for someone who gets into the box so often. There is something a bit odd about Real Madrid this year with how little Vinicius and Hazard create (.52 and .29 xG + xA per 90) relative to how often they progress the ball into great positions. 0.52 xG + xA is nothing to sneeze about but to become a Neymar type figure, those numbers will need to take a big leap.

He’s got a lot of the skills to become one of the worlds very best, it’s hard to see him falling below a Hazard-type player at the very least. Not a bad future.

Technical details

I wanted to see how he stacked up to fellow players at his part of the pitch so I made these graphics. This chart is this player compared to all other players that have similar field tilt, no differentiation is made between wide players and central players. Field tilt is calculated by weighting touches in all parts of the field: penalty box, attacking third, middle third and own third to get a rough gauge on where the player is showing up most often.

The black diamond is the players rank, the gray circle is his teammates who occupy a similar spot on the field’s rank.

The first two columns are basically purely stylistic, what % of a players total touches are in the box and what % of a players progression comes via carries.

The next one is about how often a player’s number is called: target share is how often passed are played to him, relative to an average player on his team.

Field Tilt is how far up the field a players average touch comes.

The next two are often tied together, but not always. Yards Per Min Progressed looks just at passes and carries yardage gained per minute to judge volume of progression, the next Yards Per Ball Loss looks at that with a denominator of ball losses to judge efficiency of progression.

Rec% shows how often a pass intended for a player is successful.

Live SCA/90 shows how many shots are created from a players actions per 90 minutes.

And of course, the most important metric on this chart is the final one: np xG + xA/90 which measures total goal production by a player stripping out penalties.