Lucas Paqueta SIGNED

[Alan]

"Lucas Paqueta: Lost in Milan, reborn at Lyon – and now West Ham’s statement signing By James Horncastle From the mountains overlooking Rio de Janeiro you can, on a clear day, see a small island across the Guanabara Bay. It was here, in 1997, that the man set to become West Ham’s club-record signing, Lucas Tolentino Coelho da Lima, was born, a player better known by the name of his birthplace, the once-glamorous Ilha de Paqueta. The journey he embarked on to become a professional footballer began with his grandfather Mirao ushering him and his older brother onto a ferry to cross the water between their home and Rio de Janeiro, where Lucas Paqueta attended Flamengo’s Gavea academy and Matheus trained at Ninho, another of the club’s facilities. Paqueta has a tattoo on his forearm of a star and the letter “M” in recognition of the contribution his late grandfather made in making him who he is today; an established Brazil international upon whom clubs in Italy, France and England have lavished more than €100million (£84.8m; $100m) in transfer fees before his 25th birthday. The “Brazil premium” is still very much a thing, although just imagine what Paqueta would go for had he been born and raised on Canvey Island in Essex and called Luke Canvey. Presumably, he’d make Jack Grealish look cheap. But we digress. At Gavea, the boy off the boat impressed. Growing up on an island with no cars, Paqueta played uninterrupted for hours in the streets and on the beach. He had a rare touch and feel for the game. One of his youth coaches Ze Ricardo marvelled at Paqueta’s universal skill set. He was like every midfielder rolled into one. “He could develop into a No 5, 6, 7, 8, a No 10,” Ze Ricardo told France Football. “He was very intelligent. He knew how to position himself and was fearless.” But at 15, Paqueta was under-sized for his age. The growth spurt his peers experienced didn’t arrive and all of a sudden the star of Flamengo’s youth sector couldn’t get into the team anymore. Paqueta didn’t take it very well. He cried and was irritable. Maybe this was it? All those nights catching the last ferry, the 21-mile roundtrip with Mirao. All for what? To go back to being a tour guide on the island, a job Paqueta did for some extra pocket money in his spare time? His mother wouldn’t stand for it. She went down to the academy and kicked up a fuss. Flamengo came round to her point of view and drew up a bespoke plan for Paqueta. Targeted nutrition, a bit of power training and fitness work had the desired effect and he shot up, gaining about a foot in height. It was all worth it. Paqueta ran the show as Flamengo’s under-17s won the Copinha and when the club’s first-team coach Muricy Ramalho asked the academy chiefs if they had anyone for him, one teenager stood out. Not long after making his debut in the Rio state championship, Paqueta scored his first goal in the professional game. It was no ordinary goal either. Tricks in tight spaces and his knack for making a mark on big occasions — Paqueta scored in the 2017 Copa do Brasil and Copa Sudamericana finals — then quickly made him the darling of Flamengo fans. Among them was one of their former players, Leonardo, who was back at AC Milan as the club’s sporting director. After hanging up his boots, he had cut his teeth in recruitment working under former chief executive Adriano Galliani. As the only Brazilian in Milan’s old offices on Via Turati, the signings of Thiago Silva and Alexandre Pato were widely credited to him. One of Leonardo’s first moves upon returning to the club after leaving Paris Saint-Germain and trying his hand at coaching again with Antalyaspor was to attempt to sign the next big thing out of Brazil. A deal worth €35million was struck with Flamengo in the autumn of 2018 and Paqueta joined the following January. There were echoes of Pato’s arrival a little over a decade earlier and the nostalgia hit hard. Leonardo had accompanied Kaka to Paris to collect his Ballon d’Or in 2007 and, as he left, famously remarked he’d be back with Pato. Injuries ultimately stopped him from fulfilling his potential but the talent was obvious. Memories of the early Pato, along with the illustrious association between Brazil and the last great Milan sides, loaded tremendous expectation on Paqueta’s shoulders. The rainbow flick he performed on his Serie A debut against Genoa only added to it. Had Leonardo only gone and found the new Kaka? Fans at San Siro certainly hoped so. After all, this wasn’t 2003, when Kaka joined a Champions League-winning team and people wondered whether this preppy-looking kid from Sao Paulo would get a game amid competition from Manuel Rui Costa and Rivaldo. In 2019, Milan needed a saviour. The club hadn’t been in the Champions League for five years and would have gone to the wall had Elliott Management not repossessed it from Li Yonghong. The hope projected on Paqueta was that he might almost single-handedly make Milan elite again. Paqueta’s adaptation wasn’t easy. Whereas in the past there would have been a group of players like Dida, Serginho, Cafu, Thiago Silva, Pato and Kaka to help him settle in, by the time Paqueta arrived at Milanello there were no Brazilians left at the club. The second language at Milan these days is French, not Portuguese, and when Leonardo left six months after signing Paqueta, his protege felt isolated. Paqueta was only there a year, but the club went through three coaches. When he joined midway through the season, Rino Gattuso had already settled on his best team and couldn’t find a spot for him. Marco Giampaolo told Paqueta to be “less Brazilian and more concrete, less showy”. By the time Stefano Pioli got the job, the direction of travel was hard to reverse and the midfield player who benefited most from his appointment turned out to be Hakan Calhanoglu. Paqueta, in Pioli’s mind, needed to be “more incisive”. Internally, Milan were of the opinion they had overpaid Flamengo for what Paqueta was at the time. The €21million Lyon were prepared to pay for him in the late summer of 2020 was therefore considered something of a miracle and the 15 per cent sell-on Milan cleverly negotiated means they will get their money back and have a nice windfall ahead of the final week of the transfer window. There are no regrets, even though Lyon will make close to three times what Paqueta cost them. He has flourished in Ligue 1. “I put myself under a lot of pressure in Milan,” Paqueta reflected in L’Equipe. “Too much even. When I moved to France I told myself I didn’t have to put myself through that again. I just had to do my best. “Sometimes there isn’t a reason for failure. My time at Milan wasn’t extraordinary by any means, I probably achieved less than expected, but it served me well and made me a better player; a different, stronger player who rediscovered the essence of what he was at Flamengo. The pressure is still there but it doesn’t come from myself anymore.” In Lyon, Paqueta found another big club, just not one on the same scale as Milan. The environment was less demanding than San Siro and the league less tactically strait-jacketed than Serie A. Behind the transfer was another legend of the Brazilian game, the free-kick maestro Juninho Pernambucano, who had been enticed back to Lyon as the club’s sporting director to build a team mixing the best products of Europe’s finest academy with the technical refinement of his home nation, namely Paqueta, Bruno Guimaraes and Thiago Mendes. The team that reached the semi-finals of the 2020 Champions League under Rudi Garcia, upsetting Juventus and Manchester City along the way, evolved from an aggressive, transition-based 3-5-2 to a 4-3-3 which sought control through a neat possession game made possible thanks to the quintet of Brazilians, Houssem Aouar and Maxence Caqueret. It promised a lot and a 1-0 win away to Mauricio Pochettino’s PSG before Christmas showcased the elegant press-resistant side to Paqueta’s game as he helped Lyon relieve the pressure around their penalty area and get up the pitch. Paqueta offered glimpses of a complete midfielder, whose ability to disrupt opponents as they progressed towards Lyon’s goal married the aesthetic with the aggressive. On the ball, as his smarterscout profile below shows, he often kept his passing short and sharp, with neat interchange (link-up play volume 86 out of 99) rather than longer, searching balls upfield (progressive passing 27 out of 99). Those actions seemingly kept possession at an above-average rate compared with other central attacking midfielders (ball retention ability 59 out of 99). Off the ball, Paqueta’s ability to disrupt opponents with his high volume of defensive actions such as tackles and blocks (disrupting opposition moves 98 out of 99) was also highly effective in preventing opponents from progressing towards Lyon’s goal (defending impact 73 out of 99). Halfway through his first campaign in Ligue 1, L’Equipe named him in their team of the season so far. Once the polemic subsided about Tite prematurely handing Lucas Paqueta the Brazil No 10 shirt for a friendly against Argentina in 2019 — a decision Rivaldo took as a lack of respect for Rivelino, Zico and Ronaldinho — he established himself as a regular. His versatility means he will probably start at the World Cup. “He has the talent to be one of the top players,” Emerson Palmieri told The Athletic earlier this summer. The Euro 2020 winner spent last season on loan at Lyon and will be reunited with Paqueta after joining West Ham from Chelsea. “He’s still young and I believe we have to have patience with him because sometimes youngsters have ups and downs.” The oscillating performances Palmieri touches upon refers to the Lyonnais perception of Paqueta as an absolute joy to watch on his day. But he lacks consistency. Garcia felt he needed to show more killer instinct in his passing rather than playing simple, short and sideways. The team also went backwards in Paqueta’s time, declining from Champions League semi-finalists to no Champions League football at all in back-to-back years. Last season under Peter Bosz was the worst the club has experienced in a quarter of a century. Either the team underperformed or wasn’t as good as people thought. Guimaraes was sold to Newcastle in January to offset some of the lost earnings from missing out on the Champions League and Lyon have gone back to players they can rely on like Alexandre Lacazette and Corentin Tolisso. More substance, less style. Paqueta was ready for a new challenge but the lacklustre showings he put in over the second half of the last campaign also made Lyon open to moving on. Romain Faivre can replace him between the lines and Jeff Reine Adelaide’s return from injury covers Lyon in midfield. A fee of up to €60million from West Ham is frankly too good to turn down and would make Paqueta the club’s most lucrative sale after Tanguy Ndombele. West Ham fans will be hoping they get more bang for their buck than Tottenham did for their record signing who returned to Lyon on loan last season and is now at Napoli. “His quality is there for all to see,” Palmieri said of Paqueta. “He’s a dedicated guy, someone who is obsessed with winning games and competing for titles. He has everything he needs to develop further. I think he has a brilliant future ahead of him.”"

[Manuel]

"White Pony 10:54 Mon Sep 19 ''Can we boo him yet?'' We haven't even booed Soucek and Fornals, and they have been playing like hungover pub players for a year, so I reckon this genius will be alright for a bit, don't you?"

[Takashi Miike]

"yes, another 6ft 4in carthorse would have been the answer. just need felaini brought back to england and we can a have a triple threat of those two and the potato salad eating czech robot. fuck off"

[Come On You Irons]

"Takashi Miike, stop embarrassing yourself. It is clear that Paqueta had a stinker yesterday and should have been hooked at half time, not reactively around 60 minutes after we inevitably went a goal down. AC Milan fans thought he was a joke player. Just because he gets into a wesk Brazil midfield doesn't mean he is a footballing God. He was alao in the Lyon midfield when we turned them over 0-3 last season, for a bit of balance. The fact we spunked £50 million on this clown is an embrassment. I never wanted the fancy dan in the first place. Onana would have been a much better signing but we typically fucked up that signing."

[Takashi Miike]

*four or five options*

[Takashi Miike]

"""Iwobi showed him up with how to play the 10 role."" that's because iwobi had about four five options (maupay, gtay, gana, gordon) in space every time he got on the ball. are you actually watching what our other players are doing, or not doing? simple things like running, get in good positions, working hard?"

[White Pony]

Can we boo him yet?

[Stowie.40]

"Don’t get why people are defending a shit performance, yeah he obviously deserves time but he was shit & we have the right to call a 50m player out when he has a bad game. Iwobi showed him up with how to play the 10 role."

[Manuel]

*fault

[Manuel]

"And there it is, the latest player that cannot be criticised, completely above it. Nice work if you can get it. So it's Moyes's thought that Pacqueta was passing the ball to Everton yesterday, is it? What a fucking joke it is on here now."

[GoalLazio]

"Ridiculous that this bloke is getting doubted when its clear that he and Scamacca are not suited to the style of play that Moyes has persisted with this season. Both must be wondering what shit show of a circus they have been brought into. Moyes needs to start to try and play football and get these two involved. He's got one or two games maximum until he is fired in my book and that's only giving him some grace due to the last couple of seasons. I've seen enough to make a call that Emerson and Cornet are mediocre signings at best which Moyes has squandered some decent dough on, they are hardly the next level and don't offer anything extra to the team apart from squad numbers. We are shit and the table doesn't lie - heads are down, Moyes looks lost and he cant be far off from losing the players."

[Mace66]

"Manuel 4:27 Mon Sep 19 Can’t argue with that, pretty much all I’ve noticed from him is losing the ball and Iwobi totally lost him as he was ball watching for the goal today. Doesn’t look like he’s that keen on putting too much effort into getting back either, a bit Anderson-esque"

[Manuel]

"You can brush it up how you want, but the bottom line is his start is a worry and clearly not going how we and him would have hoped. Very typical, I suppose. Credit in the bank is he's Brazil's no 10 and is revered by many in the game and by respected journo's, like Andy Brassell. Negs are he was bombed out by Milan, and the bigger clubs didn't seem to be sniffing. Of course the system, tactics from Moyes isn't helping at all, but you can't blame Moyes when he gives the ball away cheaply, as he has quite often so far. I expected better passing from Brazil's no 10. I hope he doesn't become our latest player that can't be criticized, and if you are one of them posters ask yourself was you the same with Fornals and Soucek, because if so, you got that horribly wrong, and should learn from it."

[RM10]

Tell Takky Mike Antonio’s value has quadrupled.

[simon.s]

Another player whose value will half after a spell under Moyes.

[Sven Roeder]

He needs to adjust better & realise in the English game he will be closed down & wont have so much time on the ball. But if you are going to buy a £50m Brazil regular you need to build a team around him with Scamacca in front & Rice covering behind. But around him you'd think a manager would see Downes as a basic player who can win the ball and play simple passes in to him (unlike Soucek) .... and also have a pacey player like Cornet outside him (unlike Fornals) who he can release with his quick passing. Maybe I am mental but the above seems pretty OBVIOUS

[Hammer and Pickle]

"Agree with that ED. And if he is going to start Paqueta, he needs to do so with Benrahma, Bowen and Scamacca. Playing him for 90 minutes would also demonstrate real support rather than grudging acceptance."

[Yarmouth]

"Manager to owner - 'I'd like 45m to buy a new striker as the current one doesn't;t score anymore. Owner to manager - ok, I hope your'e buying quality as thats a lot of money'. We're in the bottom 3 and playing crap after 7 games. 'Why aren't you playing the new striker either from the start or at least with the old striker to help him?' 'I haven't really got an answer..' Oh, ok, you're fired then. This would happen in any other business. It'll happen here too, especially with Tuchel available. And so it fucking well should."

[Yarmouth]

"Manager to owner - 'I'd like 45m to buy a new striker as the current one doesn't;t score anymore. Owner to manager - ok, I hope your'e buying quality as thats a lot of money'. We're in the bottom 3 and playing crap after 7 games. 'Why aren't you playing the new striker either from the start or at least with the old striker to help him?' 'I haven't really got an answer..' Oh, ok, you're fired then. This would happen in any other business. It'll happen here too, especially with Tuchel available. And so it fucking well should."

[13 Brentford Rd]

Moyes is coaching him so he gets a pass.

[Sajmo1]

Surround him with players who can actually pass the ball and has some pace

[Eerie Descent]

"Gets a pass from me at the moment. The team has been so fucking shit for so long now, to expect him to come in, and be asked to sit in with 10 men behind the ball for the first hour, it's clearly not his game. He's the one new player that really does need time to adjust to this league, and is the only one that the manager is slinging in to start. Moyes really is getting pretty much everything wrong, and it's so startlingly obvious."

[Texas Iron]

Haller…Scamacca… Anderson…Paqueta… Moyes can’t work with quality… Prefers solid cloggers…

[twoleftfeet]

If Brooking and Devonshire were here Moyes would have them both on the bench whilst Neil Orr and Martin Allen started.

[Willtell]

I thought it was WHO regulations that we blamed Sullivan and not Moyes for failed signings...

[Nagel]

"Regardless of results and the quality of football, if a manager can't get the best out of his most expensive players then he won't be in his job long. Of our 5 most expensive attacking players he's got rid of three of them at a massive loss and the latest two look like they could go the same route."