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.”"

[dealcanvey]

He escapes criticism from some but most realise that he was sub standard 1st half of the season for the money spent.

[Takashi Miike]

""" probably his best performance for us, he played a more advanced role, similar to his first few months here. "" no, his best performance was thursday night. where he continually broke up play and set up attacks from DEEP"

[Takashi Miike]

"I know exactly where he played for lyon (10, behind the striker), when we played them. completely anonymous, cancelled out by rice. before we signed him, was playing in on the right hand side of a three. he's clearly been withdrawn from that advanced position since the world cup, to pretend he hasn't shows you're another that is either trolling or hasn't got a clue what he's watching"

[Nagel]

"That's not true about his preferred position. In fact for Brazil the World Cup was the first time he played in a midfield two. Previously he was usually the most advanced central midfielder, behind two of Fred, Guimaraes, Fabinho or Casemiro. At club level he'd sometimes play as a 10, sometimes in a midfield 3. Also worth noting that yesterday, in probably his best performance for us, he played a more advanced role, similar to his first few months here. Not saying that Moyes shouldn't bear some responsibility for his form, but Paqueta has not been played out of position at all, unlike some."

[Takashi Miike]

"""No they weren't he has been largely disappointing this season."" the manager didn't even play him in his preferred position until after the world cup, do you even know what you're watching you thick cսnt?"

[fraser]

"Yeah he's taken a long time to settle for whatever reason, tactics, new country, new league but those calling him a did, a fraud and shit player.. Oh and a bottle job were always way off the mark."

[Rossal]

"No they weren't he has been largely disappointing this season. However the last few games he has been very good, much like the rest of the team"

[Takashi Miike]

"some truly clueless comments on this thread, possibly the worst takes ever on a player"

[Hammer and Pickle]

"It ought to be clear to all that we have two of the world’s best midfielders’ services at our disposal. Amazing it’s taken this long and a relegation battle for the manager to work this out. Also, it remains to be seen if he can add Fornals and Downs as regular starters to really bring out the potential in the squad. An attack of Scamacca and Bowen should be the favoured approach with players like Benrahma and Soucek coming on later in games as required. In defence, we need back up for Zouma and Ogbonna, who are injury prone at this stage in their career."

[dealcanvey]

Been a sceptic of his but he’s definitely starting to resemble a 50m pound player in regards to consistency over the last 5/6 games

[dealcanvey]

Been a sceptic of his but he’s definitely starting to resemble a 50m pound player in regards to consistency over the last 5/6 games

[Mex Martillo]

Top player

[paulon]

Pentonville 1:54 Sun Mar 5

[Leonard Hatred]

Fuck off Keep Dreaming you disgusting pervert

[Keep dreaming]

"Not slagging him off, brilliant player, but as Sajmo says, it's pointless in a Moyes team. What players have grown under Moyes after all?"

[Pentonville]

Anyone slagging him off is grasping at straws..watch what tune a new manager gets out of him or if he goes to another club. There is only one man to blame here. MOYES has one way of playing and can't adapt despite whoever it was buying for the past 2 years trying to change his method of thinking. Moyes wants 11 Fellainis or Souceks and that's it. It's embarrassing to watch how many players Moyes has fucked over or destroyed as a player amd then read people blaming the player. Watch Rooney interview about moyes. He lays all success at Duncan fergusons door for his career and says his career is in SPITE OF MOYES not becuase of it.

[Sajmo1]

Player who trives in the possession based system struggles in a hoof ball system. An absolute shock!

[Nick QQQ]

Fuck knows how you can pick out a single player at the moment. They are all playing way below par. One reason for that.

[Side of Ham]

I cannot judge any Brazilian player who is not a defender and expected to play in a timid set up seeing very little of the ball. He’s being coached to be a bottle job under Moyes

[Iron Duke]

"He isn’t a bad player, but he’s worth about half of what we paid for him. He doesn’t really offer much. He doesn’t score much. He doesn’t create much. He’s not an enforcer. His passing stats are nothing special. It doesn’t help the way we are set up. Even Rice is looking pretty ordinary for us this season. Even so, he stands out in a shit team. Paqueta doesn’t. Our whole club set up with Moyes, Newman, Sullivan and now Noble is baffling. There is no plan. There’s no strategy. There’s no cohesion."

[nychammer]

"This is also the problem, I'm pretty sure Sullivan uses this club as some real life Fantasy Football game. Paqueta was a typical Moyes signing? Come the fuck on!"

[Come On You Irons]

"I'm glad a few others are awake to how much of a fraud this clown is. Cowering out of tackles, dispossessed multiple times during matches, giving the ball away numerous times trying Hollywood balls etc. The fella is a samba dancing, fancy pants, bottle job joke, and it is embarrassing the club wasted £50 million on him."

[onsideman]

I'm simply not having him. Hopeless. He'll do something good in one game in 5 and the MotD pundits will highlight it and we're all supposed to be grateful to have him. Bloke's a fraud

[Manuel]

"He plays like a girl, maybe he is a girl? Woeful cսnt."

[dealcanvey]

That piece of defending in the first ten minutes. Turned his back on the player and stuck his left leg out backwards. Even the commentators asked wtf he was doing. Sums up his time here. Good against Forest but mostly weak and underwhelming performances. That’s what 50 million quid buys West Ham. 2 million buys Brighton a player like Mitoma.