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The data that show why Ansu Fati is still not a starter at Barça

BarcelonaIt was the 60th minute of the match in Munich, Barça were losing 2-0 and Xavi Hernández made the first changes. The team needed gunpowder to try to shorten distances on the scoreboard and the Barcelona coach chose Ferran Torres as an attacker to freshen up the offensive: the Valencian came in for Raphinha Dias. Ansu Fati, on the other hand, would not enter until the 80th minute. The Spanish Guinean is one of the most complete attackers that Barça has. A striker who enjoys a privileged relationship with the goal but who, after a last season marked by injuries, relapses and a final recovery that lasted almost two months longer than expected, remains unable to be a mainstay of the attack A long physical ordeal which means that, for the moment, he is not a recurring starter with Barça – he has only been so once this season, when he played 65 minutes against the modest Viktoria Plzen.

Nor has he been called up by Luis Enrique for the next national team stop, in which Spain will play two games corresponding to the Nations League. On the other hand, he had done it in the last call-up, last June, although he did not play a single minute. “I brought him in to get into the group dynamic and see how he was. He’s only started one game this season, and that’s saying a lot. Hopefully he’ll get back to his level, but I don’t see him for the roster these days, that’s why I didn’t bring him. He’s in the process of regaining confidence and improving,” the Asturian said this Friday.

The management of the minutes that Ansu is playing at Barça is stipulated by the Blaugrana coaching staff, with the supervision of the medical services. The player has been registered since the end of last year, but he still does not have the desired pace or intensity to be indisputable. “He’s fine. We’re making a plan, very cautiously, cautiously so that he feels very good, like before the injuries. He’s having a little trouble getting back to feeling, but he’s fine. Maybe it’s my fault, but we’re taking it easy . He must increase the pace and the intensity. He must go in, little by little. His situation is special, he had not played for a long time. It requires the prudence we are having”, explained Xavi in ​​the preview of the Barça-Elche this Saturday (4.15 p.m., DAZN).

The Barcelona coach has defended that Ansu’s last injury – muscular and for which he chose not to have surgery but to follow a conservative treatment that lasted almost twice as long as planned – “has been overcome”. The club’s medical services advised him to undergo surgery – there is the recent example of Dembélé, stable after two interventions for muscle injuries – but the player, after the trance with the knee operations, and his immediate environment , preferred to avoid a new operation. In the Barça dressing room they don’t see him at 100% and they miss a certain explosiveness in his game.

However, publicly Xavi also denies that Ansu plays with fear, despite the fact that Luis Enrique has spoken about a matter of “trust”. “It’s not a mental issue of the player. I’m the one who decides who has to play and who doesn’t. Last year maybe we went too fast, he relapsed and it was a problem for him. We made a plan and the we are following”, defended the Barça coach. Xavi wanted to defend the offensive contribution, despite the fact that it was from the bench, from the 10th in the victory in Anoeta, in which the attacker contributed with a goal and two assists in the comeback.

In fact, this year, when Ansu has been on the pitch in all five La Liga games played so far, the team’s goalscoring ratio is up by three more goals per game, according to Stats Bomb data adjusted to 90 minutes A reference that conditions rival defenses in particular because it shows that, when the 10 plays, Barça gets a better difference in goals per game. A statistic in which he is followed by Pedri and Lewandowski, while the leader is Marcos Alonso. In the case of the Madrid winger, however, it is explained in a circumstantial way: he only played 15 minutes, against Cadiz, in which the team scored two goals. One of them, by the way, the work of the Spanish-Guinean, who has already accumulated two this season in five League games.

More creative, more pin

Although it is too early to draw firm conclusions, the first five days of the championship detail the trend of a more creative Ansu, who drops more to receive the ball, and less focused exclusively on definition. Since participating with the first team of Barça, it is the course that is taking part more in the middle of the field and less in the last third. The Hispanoguinean is no longer just a sharp striker in the area, but also participates in his most season press.

This is explained, in part, by the player’s tendency to play after injuries, less explosive in the last few meters, but more participative – he makes more key passes (which end with a teammate trying the shot) and passes that end up in the last third of the field— and, also, because of the football model that Xavi wants to apply with respect to Ernesto Valverde, with whom he made his debut, and Ronald Koeman, the coach during the last season and a half. Of the three, Egarenc is the one who bets more on open ends, although, occasionally, the one on the left side goes more inside, as is the case of Ansu. The heat maps of the first leg of the 20/21 season, before injuring his knee, show a Fati more present in the last leg of the field.

Maps of Ansu Fati during the 20/21 season, before he got injured.

Another data that explains the evolution between the Ansu of 2020 and that of 2022 is what is called the high intensity distance. It measures the meters per game that players devote to sprinting. Before injuring his meniscus, the forward was, after Trincao, the player with the highest average. Now he has four teammates ahead of him – Raphinha, Balde, Marcos Alonso and Ferran – and last year, a total of ten. There is some improvement, but not all that is expected in a player like him. He has also regressed in the ratio of sprints per game in relation to the playing time he has. In 2020 it was second in the ranking, while last year it dropped to sixth place. He has now risen to fifth position in a ranking that, of the starting footballers, is led by Raphinha. These are data collected by Media Coach, the analysis service used by the League and to which the ARA has had access.

Does this mean that Ansu even less rivals? Not necessarily. According to the Media Coach, he is the third attacker (in relation to minutes played), with a higher average of dribbles per game (6.7), tied with Dembélé and only surpassed by Ferran Torres (7.4). Last year (4.5) he was fourth on the team, behind Dembélé (6.5), Adama (8.1) and Abde (10.1). Ansu continues to dribble and remains a pain for opposing defenses, but has moderated his explosive spirit. In fact, in this same ranking, the Hispanoguinean only had a worse dribbling average than Leo Messi before injuring his knee.

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