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.”"

[Mace66]

Must admit I got a bit excited when we had the ball out wide in the final third and Paqueta got all animated running towards the ball waving his arms. What’s he gonna do I thought. I sat gob-smacked as he met the ball with a side foot volley knocking it backwards over their midfield to Ogbonna in our half. Lots of little tricks like that but fuck all end product

[northbankboy68]

I think he's an abject failure. Who on earth was responsible for spaffing all that money on him. We have better in Lanzini and Fornals.

[Side of Ham]

"That's about right though deal, seeing as the club would look to get double for Rice AND the fact if he wasn't at West Ham we would never be in the running to get to sign him as the player he's established himself as."

[dealcanvey]

He was shit imo. Not seen anything to suggest he is close to Rice’s level. Seems to get a pass because he’s Brazilian and cost 50 million. If he’s replaced by downes or Fornals for the next game he can have no complaints regardless who the manager is.

[Side of Ham]

"deal, the fact a Brazilian with attacking prowess is making a back pass says it all...... :-)"

[dealcanvey]

"Paqueta’s only through ball yesterday was to Brentford’s Wissa, Coufal in turn had to bring him down and take a yellow card."

[Side of Ham]

I cannot judge the likes of Fornals and Paqueta until they are under a different manager who has their strengths in mind when playing them rather than limit them to do a job of suppress the opposition. My reason for this is the fact they are considered by their countries (who have a wealth of technically talented players to choose from) as players with the level of skill to possibly represent them at international level. I doubt any manager who we got in would not consider them at first to be vital to them succeeding at the club.

[Any Old Iron]

"Apart from the fact, and it is a fact, that this bloke has done fuck all for us the other thing that worries me about him is his fitness - or lack of it. It's 3 weeks since Brazil left the WC so he's had a chance to rest and then prepare for the PL. No excuses, but last night he was blowing out of his arse before HT. He looked absolutely knackered and that is unacceptable. Anyway the club clearly failed to learn from the Haller Anderson debacle and just repeated it with Scamacca and this fella."

[Sir Alf]

"Paqueta is essentially a slightly better version of Fornals in terms of pace but not quite as good so far in terms of creativity. Moyes would have been better served spending money on more energy and pace in the side, another striker alongside Scamacca ( like he has always had ) and perhaps even playing Downes as a DM and playing Fornals as a number 10. The money could also been used on pacy wing backs. Moyes has fvcked everything up except perhaps the purchase of Aguerd but we will soon find that out too. Will he handle the increased physical and pace requirements of the Premiership? I think it looks like he can from his Morocco performances but he was flanked by 2 excellent fast wing backs. The season is a complete disaster and our owners are hoping for a miracle"

[Vexed]

"It's just fucking dense to try to deny this bloke has quality, he clearly has. Under another manager it'd be fair to coat him off but under Moyes this season it aint. Show me a player that hasn't been dogshit this season?"

[Side of Ham]

The point that should be made here is that we have bought in technically good players and a couple of them have their roots firmly in being schooled properly from first kicking a ball in Fornals & Paqueta…..now we are arguing amongst ourselves whether they are just plain shit….this for now can only be because it’s been consistently down to a manager making these players take their defensive duties far to seriously they have to do their attacking roles as a secondary part of their game always with the pressure of don’t dare lose the ball as we can’t cope with a break away by the opposition. Our attacking threat is not of concern to the opposition anymore we’ve shrunk into our shell with regards to making the opposition worry about us. That’s coached…..

[Ron Eff]

"The difference is Brazil can have a player who just ticks things over, particularly in a slower international game, we don’t have that luxury with less quality around him and in a much faster style of football. I’m not fully writing him off though, he will probably look far more comfortable in a midfield three but either way, he needs to adapt and quickly. Much as he is derided by some on here, I cannot understand why Fornals isn’t being played. He has always been better in an advanced central midfield position but Moyes made him look an average player by making him play as a defensive left midfielder. We absolutely miss his endeavour though, and we are a better side with him playing, even if he does frustrate at times."

[zico]

"From transfermarkt.co.uk so not sure how accurate. For me the assists for a creative midfielder are a little low, Club

[swindon hammer]

"“He must be a good player if he plays for the Brazilian national team alongside Neymar” I’m sorry but that’s an absolute cop out. There have been plenty of average players that have played for Brazil over the years. As for Neymar, it’s like saying Neil Orr must be good because he played alongside Brooking & Devonshire."

[RM10]

But he couldn’t pass last night

[grasshopper]

He must be a good player if he plays for the Brazilian National side alongside Neymar. It’s probably the shit team and tactics around him that’s a problem.

[grasshopper]

He must be a good player if he plays for the Brazilian National side alongside Neymar. It’s probably the shit team and tactics around him that’s a problem.

[Mad Dog]

He's the only player even trying anything. And 3 goals is 1/4 of our entire league goals. He's widely acknowledged as our best player currently. And everyone except you and moyes can see that. And moyes is probably bitter that he's doing too much of that fancy running at people and not passing it backwards

[fraser]

"COYI Moyes will bomb out Benrahma next season Moyes won't give Benrahma any more minutes in the PL this season Saka is a waste of space and shouldn't be nowhere near this England team.. Before going on to be motm I could spend all day proving what a clueless cսnt you are, but I have plans.. Like I said you're not alone but you're the only one who disappears only to pop up with I called it.. HNY to you and everyone else :-)"

[RM10]

Does it stop you from passing the ball to another player?

[Come On You Irons]

"Mad Dog, you're commenting as though Benrahma is tearing the league up. He has scored three league goals this season (and 12 in 76 games in total). One goal every 6 plus games is hardly prolific for a Premier League forward, is it."

[Crassus]

"Whilst he has been somewhat underwhelming it's obvious that he is not a Moyes player In fact it is on the public record that the dithering one said after his signing and selection that he did not know where to play him! All very contradictory (yet again) given his professed extensive scouting, dossier producing and character assessing before any purchase Looking like an expensive round peg in Moyes's square hole"

[Mad Dog]

Nice how you glossed right over your obsessive hatred of benrahma. You also glossed over the fact I said he might not be suited to premier league

[Come On You Irons]

"Triggered much, fraser? What have I called wrong then? Go on, I'm all ears."

[fraser]

"COYI - You've called so many things on here, the majority wrong. You never hold your hands up to them ever... Yet when one comes to fruition in your opinion you're all over here with your look at me posts I called it right.. You're like the rest of us on here predict a lot get a small amount right but you're the only cսnt bigging himself up with ""I called it right"" get over yourself"