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.”"

[Lee Trundle]

Where Alex V with his xG STATS when you need him?

[stewie griffin]

"haha... number of full backs you can fit into a starting XI - that's a favourite of mine, Jibbers. More of a game than a stat, but its fun to play"

[fraser]

"Manuel - he may well be fragile now but looking at his last two seasons he didn't seem to be then, so my point was to 360 that we didn't sign a player who was known to be injury prone."

[Eerie Descent]

"Apart from BLOCKS, TACKLES & CLEARANCE stats, Stewie?"

[stewie griffin]

"""his 2 goals and 3 assist in 22 games is a poor return for a £50m player. And that's the bottom line. The stats don't lie."" Not specific to paqueta, but I'm pretty sure the stats do lie in this team with the way we play. There isn't a player in the world who would have good stats in this team."

[happygilmore]

and a last minute forward...Danny Ings. Probably easier to count the days he has been fit in his career.

[Russ of the BML]

"Paqueta is obviously a talented player with lots of ability. I don't think anyone can doubt that. But its what you do with that talent and ability to make the most impact that's the key to being an influential player. I don't think the lad has yet got to grips with the physicality of the PL yet. And that's what is compromising him. My old football coach as a young player always used to say ""You earn the right to play"". It's a common thing more old school managers and coaches say which means you put yourself about early and try to unsettle your opponent physically. Then you get left alone to play. Paqueta needs to learn that quickly. Because I am sure he will be much more influential if he adds some steel and backbone to the talent and ability he has. You can have all the flair and neat touches you like but you'll get found out quickly in the PL if you don't back it up with bollocks. I also think Paqueta is having a bit of an identity crisis. I mean, what is he? He's on alot of websites as an attacking midfielder. But is he? Or is he a holding midfielder? Or is he just a more traditional midfielder that plays mostly in midfield? I think his position is more defined we will see more from him. But, right now, his 2 goals and 3 assist in 22 games is a poor return for a £50m player. And that's the bottom line. The stats don't lie. And does he even make us tick? If you could physically see the impact he had on the side without posting good individual stats then you'd offer him a break. But I'm not even sure we are better with or without him."

[Eerie Descent]

Moyes has spunked nearly £70mil on 2 injury prone centre backs. You have to LOL

[Rossal]

"We had decent injury luck last few seasons and it wasnt going to last forever We've probably not even had the worst luck this season, we just get impacted the most due to Moyes being a fucking simpleton in the way he builds his squad Who plays 3 centre backs and only has 4 in the squad (2 being Zouma and Ogbonna with one knee each). I mean we only had about a whole year of knowing Dawson was off to line up a replacement Its no surprise we're down there when you look at how badly the manager and owners are running things"

[stewie griffin]

"generally agree with you, COYI son - especially about benrahma - but i think there's something there with paqueta, and i'd like to see him under a different manager, rather than go somewhere else and play well. In the first minute against Chelsea, he pinged a fantastic pass through the lines, at pace. It bounced off Antonio (i think) as usual and the ball came back at us. There's more to come I'm sure, just not in this set up"

[happygilmore]

Aguerd was out for 81 days with an ankle injury before signing and then missing 98 days for us with an ankle injury. Same ankle ?

[happygilmore]

Aguerd was out for 81 days with an ankle injury before signing and then missing 98 days for us with an ankle injury. Same ankle ?

[Manuel]

"fraser - Bollocks to the stats that some like to roll out to make a point. He's as fragile as fuck, simple as that, it's clear to see. he will always get injuries. Suffered with them before he joined us too."

[fraser]

Aguerd played 66 league games in the last two seasons.. Plus Cup games.. He's been far from injury prone.. Maybe he's getting all these niggly ones cause of the early season one he got.

[El Scorchio]

"threesixty 3:34 But if they all passed medicals and the injuries never happened before, then how are we or any other club supposed to know? I can't see how that makes sense. I think part of it is just genuinely bad luck with key players. Some of it you could argue is our training and conditioning- certainly with repeated muscle problems. Paqueta for me would fall into that first category. A bit of a freak bad fall. Same with Aguerd's injury in the summer. Hurt an ankle in the tackle- bad luck. Aguerd's new injury could fall into the latter category."

[Huffers]

"COYI - When I like to make a point, I deliver accurate stats. See previous examples of Allardyce & Antonio. I note that you're being critical of Paqueta and his one goal from open play. When was that?"

[threesixty]

"I wonder if we get these types of injuries to key players because we cant accept as a club that we cant afford quality players that aren't fucked in some ways? Top players cant just be good, they have to be dependable as well. It's mental that all our key signings seem to get long term injuries. And the injuries they get seem to be unknown, and never happened before we got them. And they all passed medicals. I suppose you get what you pay for really."

[Northern Sold]

Sounds like he's got a dose of the Bryan Robson's... he was always popping a shoulder...

[Hammer and Pickle]

There is doubt you are an idiot who can’t even put a noun phrase together.

[Come On You Irons]

"Hopefully the news of Paqueta being out for weeks is true. Improves us. And I doubt he's properly injured. Probably just doesn't have the minerals to take part in a relegation battle. The samba dancing, one goal from open play in over half a season, bottle job wanker."

[happygilmore]

"Paqueta Shoulder Injury. I remember after the initial injury last September Moyes stated, “this is a very serious injury and he could be out for quiet a while.” However, he returned in time to play in the World Cup. Someone on here probably can confirm, did he opt for the temporary fix to rush back for the WC instead of a more long-term correction? Reading this old article at the time would suggest he went for the quick fix (Country over Club): “West Ham attacker Lucas Paqueta may be at “greater risk of suffering dislocations” after opting against undergoing surgery on his shoulder injury. That is the view of medical expert Ben Dinnery Brazilian outlet UOL reported last week (4 October) that the 25-year-old had undergone “conservative” treatment rather than having surgery “Potentially down the line, you are going to be at a greater risk of suffering a dislocation. “The decision was based on what can he do to get back for the World Cup and with surgery that took that from the equation.” Now, if you pay €80m with add-ons and a weekly wage of €180k to him, then surely the club calls the shots? The required surgery would have seen him out for 7/8 weeks, and the 5 week WC break would have been ideal as part of this period of rehabilitation, leaving him missing little in way of club games. So are we now likely to see him have the required correct surgery? If not, we will probably be watching him breaking down every few weeks. Either way, delaying the correct repair, has probably meant we can expect him to miss a chunk of the crucial end of season run in. Lastly, what kind of an idiot, with a dodgy shoulder, attempts that goal celebration he did after the Newcastle goal, where he almost landed sideways!"

[Sir Alf]

"Remembrance Service for him and Aguerd, Cornet, Zouma and Scamacca to be announced on the OS soon. Charlie Corolli or Crusty the Clown to give the epitaphs / obituaries"

[Rossal]

And Paquta posted last night with some kineso tape on his shoulder and beaming smile. Hardly looked like an injury requiring weeks of rehab

[Rossal]

"Aguerd is gutting Paqueta is annoying but will we miss much? He has done fuck all really since being here. Downes and Rice on sunday would be my 2, maybe even if Paqueta was fit"

[Manuel]

I think we have to accept now we have signed an injury prone player in Aguerd. Not good.