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.”"

[eusebiovic]

A good technical player - he is learning to be much quicker with his feet. He gets less time on the ball here than in France. The usual lesson for a player like him...

[OneAll]

"him and rice are forming a mean fucking partner ship , pray we see it for one more year"

[Full Claret Jacket]

What is evident to me is that he wants to play one-touch football which means others need to move and anticipate the pass. He is going to give the ball away a lot trying stuff others won't. It's frustrating but I prefer that to boring backwards and sideways passing which just as often goes wrong.

[Hammer and Pickle]

Paqueta stepped forward and looked to Moyes and said something along the lines of “you know what he says is bollocks - I’m taking this son.”

[paulon]

fraser 12:00 Mon Apr 24 You're right - it was £36.7m plus add ons

[Nagel]

"Takashi Miike 1:11 Mon Apr 24 It's pretty obvious the reason why we haven't lost as many since Paqueta began playing a deeper role. It's because we were either playing 5 at the back or with Soucek as the most advanced CM, so the team became even more defensive minded than before. I thought Paqueta played very well yesterday, and if you look at a heat map you'll see he played at least 75% of the game in their half, while Soucek sat back and rarely ventured forward at all. That's the way we should play Paqueta, unless we wanted to be even more attacking and have Lanzini or Fornals in place of Soucek, which I'd be more than happy about."

[Rossal]

SnarestoneIron 12:18 Mon Apr 24 Benrahma stepped forward to take it and was talking to Rice as if to say 'what is he doing im the pen taker' Rice then turned away after Paqueta stepped forward and looked to Moyes and said something It most definitely wasnt planned

[cholo]

"Comparing him now to early season he didn't look fit, maybe he was french football fit but that's walking football compared to the prem. Fair play to him, lesser players would've half chucked the towel in but he's worked hard and is now starting to look like the real deal."

[fraser]

"Russ - I'm not sure we're signing any world class players for less than that whoever in charge, they'll be snapped up by bigger clubs than us unfortunately.."

[Takashi Miike]

"Nagel 11:52 Mon Apr 24 Re: Lucas Paqueta SIGNED when I post something I'm not making it up. we haven't lost a league game when he's played in that deeper role since the world cup, I think we've only lost one all season when he's been used this way. I don't give a fuck what Brazil do. It's also clear whenever he's used in the advanced role in the league (newcastle, arsenal, brighton, leicester, palace) we have had bad results https://www.whoscored.com/Players/319756/MatchStatistics/Lucas-Paquet%C3%A1"

[Russ of the BML]

"fraser 12:00 Mon Apr 24 You don't get alot for £37m plus add ons if you have clueless owners and an inept scouting system. Believe me, mate, if you have people at the club that know what they are doing you can get world class players for less."

[Lee Trundle]

"His passing seems to go from the sublime to the ridiculous. One minute he'll be splitting the opposition, threading the eye of a needle, to misplacing a 5 yard pass to the opposition. If he can cut out the latter, then he'll be monstrous. I do like him though. Always looks to be positive."

[Northern Sold]

Is a proper proper player... and now showing he is a proper proper player ... his passing is a joy and can forgive the occasional one that goes amiss... just like I always could do with the Bish'... bravery comes in different guises...

[SnarestoneIron]

"Rossal 12:15 Mon Apr 24 Took the pen off Benny? How do you know that wasn't planned? Benny took one at the weekend, which Gent would have seen - maybe it had been discussed by management. There was no strop from Benny for it going to Paqueta!"

[SnarestoneIron]

"Rossal 12:15 Mon Apr 24 Took the pen off Benny? How do you know that wasn't planned? Benny took one at the weekend, which Gent would have seen - maybe it had been discussed by management. There was no strop from Benny for it going to Paqueta!"

[Rossal]

"Takashi Miike 11:10 Mon Apr 24 Fuck off mate, whats position got to do with him giving the ball away alot, fouling loads and not pressing at all? Even thursday night gave ball away for their goal and then take the pen off of Benny Mustard yesterday yes, but needs to keep it up for me to start creaming myself over him"

[Huffers]

If we get to a final and get a penalty and he takes it like that then it'll kill me off.

[Manuel]

"He's reminding me a bit of old Johnny Moncur, known for his ability on the ball but has really started to get stuck in. I just think the penny has finally dropped that in this league you just can't be prancing around and that you need to get stuck in, and as a result of that I think it's gave him more confidence in the other side of his game. Moyes said after yesterday that we still need more from him, as good as he as been of late you still fancy he can get even better as time goes on."

[fraser]

"Wasn't his fee £37 million with add ons, I've definitely read that somewhere, so I reckon he is worth that fee you don't get much for that these days. If we have to pay the add ons he will have to be worth that too."

[Hammer and Pickle]

"There was nothing wrong with the penalty he took on Thursday, was there. He displayed the kind of bravery that many on here ignore and had Moyes all a quiver like a little fairy. Absolutely hilarious really."

[Russ of the BML]

"It's taken a hell of a long time from the real Lucas Paqueta to stand up but I feel he finally has. Although, I think he has some way to go before we can say he has been worth that transfer fee. Needs to kick on now and do it for the rest of this season and next."

[fraser]

"He played a shit pass against Gent, we defended it abysmally, you would expect them not to score from that position. A Lyon fan who posted on KUMB said he played the majority of last season as an 8 for them and was his best position, but he also said he was prone to the odd give away in deep positions but the net gain of him playing there was worth it, as it was Thursday in my opinion."

[Nagel]

"Takashi, what on earth are you on about? Where did I pretend he hasn't been playing a more withdrawn role since the World Cup? All I said was that before he joined us he was used to playing both as a 10 and in a midfield 3 so this talk of preferred position is nonsense. And if you don't think that he played a more advanced role yesterday then you're the one who hasn't got a clue what he's watching."

[Russ of the BML]

Is s top player. And last few games has really started to show his worth. I think consistency has been his issue. But he looks like he now has some momentum. Much better player sitting deep and breaking up play and collecting the ball in tight areas and moving it quickly and cleverly to get us going off on a break. Is Rice's ideal partner.

[dealcanvey]

"‘ no, his best performance was thursday night. where he continually broke up play and set up attacks from DEEP’ He literally set up Gents opener with a 10 yard pass straight to the opposition. If that was Soucek he would have been slaughtered. Luckily the goal meant very little in the end."