Steven Gerrard, James Milner, Cesc Fabregas, Aaron Ramsey and Kevin De Bruyne.
These are the last five players to average more than 50 successful passes, more than two chances created and more than two tackles per 90 minutes across a full Premier League season.
Now, a new candidate to join that club has emerged: Joao Cancelo.
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The Manchester City full-ba… midfiel… whatever he is, is the only player with those kind of figures in the Premier League this season. There are only two others in Europe’s top five leagues: Fabregas, now at Monaco, and Juan Cuadrado, who covers the right flank, and sometimes the left, for Juventus.
So five all-action midfielders and then, in Cuadrado’s case, a wing-back. That hints at what Cancelo is: he certainly starts off at full-back for City, and he has to get back there when things go wrong, but you’re just as likely to see him attacking through the middle as down the touchline.
And that’s why he might be another step forward in the Pep Guardiola full-back evolution.
Guardiola began by bringing players such as Philipp Lahm and Fabian Delph into the middle of the pitch, rather than asking them to maintain traditional wide full-back roles, but previously those inverted full-backs have helped bolster the defensive midfield position, as Oleksandr Zinchenko is doing so well for City at the moment.
Cancelo, though, is taking on even more responsibility: he’s not just helping to build the play alongside Rodri, he gets forward into attacking midfield positions, too.
The below graphic shows the difference in the 26-year-old’s positioning this season compared to last.
By virtue of playing seven games at left-back this season, compared to three last year, he has touched the ball more on that side this time around, but the main takeaway is just how much more he has seen of the ball in central areas.
The touch map below shows Cancelo’s overall versatility, as he has basically covered the whole pitch.
Compared to last season, the most obvious difference is the number of touches through the middle, and fewer on the right wing.
He’s not just supporting attacks, which is something Guardiola’s full-backs have not generally done by going through the middle, he’s doing it extremely well.
ATTACK
This table shows the players to have averaged more than 50 successful passes, two tackles and two chances created per 90 minutes for Guardiola at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and now City. (The cut-off is 1,000 minutes played, De Bruyne also achieved it in 2018-19 but saw 974 minutes of action.)
| Player | Team | Season | Successful Passes | Tackles | Chances Created | Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Joao Cancelo | 2020/2021 | 64.3 | 2.1 | 2.1 | 1343 | |
Arturo Vidal |  Bayern | 2015/2016 | 80.7 | 3.5 | 2.1 | 2047 |
Thiago | Bayern | 2015/2016 | 76.6 | 3.7 | 2 | 1636 |
Bastian Schweinsteiger | Bayern | 2014/2015 | 76.5 | 2.1 | 2.1 | 1362 |
Dani Alves |  Barcelona | 2010/2011 | 68.1 | 3.3 | 2.1 | 2901 |
Just like the earlier examples, these are creative and/or all-action midfielders, plus an extremely fit, creative right-back. Cancelo is combining those roles, and is doing so incredibly.
The Athletic’s football analytics writer, Tom Worville, suggests no player in the world game has been so creative from both right-back and left-back in the past few years, as this graphic highlights so clearly. Look at the type of players around him.
He is creating more chances and attempting more take-ons than any full-back in the league per 90 minutes, while his open play xA — a model similar to xG, which ranks the quality of the chances he is creating — is fourth best for those in his nominal position.
In terms of overall xA, his 3.71 is bettered by only six players in the league, and most of them are renowned creative threats.
Player | xA |
|---|---|
6.14 | |
5.7 | |
4.65 | |
4.04 | |
4.02 | |
3.95 | |
3.78 | |
3.67 | |
3.66 | |
3.59 |
Cancelo is also one of only two players in smarterscout’s database — which covers 48 leagues going back to 2016-17 — who has put up strong attacking and defending numbers at both left-back and right-back. Of all players with a minimum of 500 minutes at both positions in a season, only Leeds’ Stuart Dallas, in their Championship title-winning side last season, put up comparable attacking and defensive metrics.
One of the biggest weapons in Cancelo’s arsenal is the through ball, which he demonstrated in his early appearances as a left-back last season. What he tries doesn’t always come off, as is the case for the most creative players in the league, but when he slides a ball between a full-back and his centre-back for a runner in behind, it gets City into incredibly dangerous situations.
This ball, played from the left side with his right foot, led to them being awarded a penalty.
The 21-cap Portugal international can also play these passes from the right side, with his left foot…
…or simply play in team-mates through the middle.
This graphic shows the chances he has created for others so far this season, and one particular type of pass stands out: the ball from a central position to the right-hand side, for players such as Riyad Mahrez, Bernardo Silva and Raheem Sterling to run onto.
as of February 1, 2021
He has only two league assists this season, but nobody at City has made more passes leading to an assist than Cancelo. Across the league in general, only Jack Grealish and James Rodriguez have more.
as of February 1, 2021
There were two great, and identical, examples in December, when he had possession in central areas and played a ball in behind for Sterling, who pulled it back for Ilkay Gundogan to score.
He is no stranger to a shot, either, although generally these have been from long range, and not especially accurate. He did score a fine effort against West Brom recently, though, and if he starts to put away more of those then he would be well into Player of the Year territory.
This graph shows where he has been shooting from…
And this one shows where those attempts have ended up…
So, he is involved in plenty of attacks that end in a shot, and he is absolutely instrumental in City’s build-up play, too. As highlighted after that win over West Brom last month, City have had more variety in attack since the goalless Manchester derby a couple of weeks before Christmas, with Gundogan, Silva and Phil Foden becoming more involved in possessions that end in a shot, and Rodri and Zinchenko also heavily involved in the build-up play as well.
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All season, Cancelo has been involved in both of those aspects of play. Before City sparked into life after that pre-Christmas derby, he, Mahrez and De Bruyne were their most creative players, with the Portuguese contributing from left-back (where he does look good, though he’s perhaps better suited to his current role on the right/through the middle). Others have helped shoulder the burden in the last six weeks, but Cancelo is just as important despite changing positions.
This graphic, by Catalan data analyst Pol Balletbo, takes information from City’s games in all competitions this season and features outfield players to have played over 800 minutes. It shows players involved in possessions (the more involved, the closer they are to the right), players involved in possessions that end in shots (closer to the top) and a player’s xA (the lighter the blue, the better).
This highlights different groups of players within the squad.
Sterling, Gabriel Jesus and Ferran Torres are forwards focused on finishing moves in the final third; Kyle Walker, Benjamin Mendy, Fernandinho, Aymeric Laporte and Ruben Dias have a bit more of a defensive outlook; Mahrez, Foden and Silva are attacking players more involved in midfield areas; Cancelo, Gundogan, Rodri, Zinchenko and John Stones are at the heart of City’s work in possession. And De Bruyne is De Bruyne.
In fact, Pol says, De Bruyne distorts the graph somewhat, just like Lionel Messi often does. The Belgian’s performances diminish those of his team-mates.
So here they are without him.
This table shows similar results: Cancelo is the City player involved in the most open play sequences per 90 minutes, meaning nobody is more a part of the team’s play than he is. He also ranks fourth for accumulated xG from those sequences, meaning only De Bruyne, Mahrez and Sterling are involved in more dangerous attacks.
Player | OP Involved in | xG from OP Involved In |
|---|---|---|
57.4 | 0.66 | |
56.2 | 0.62 | |
53.3 | 0.3 | |
52.2 | 0.64 | |
49.1 | 0.17 | |
48.7 | 0.89 | |
47.7 | 0.45 | |
46.7 | 0.49 | |
45.4 | 0.83 | |
44.9 | 0.64 | |
40 | 0.64 | |
39.2 | 0.74 | |
28.8 | 0.6 | |
28.1 | 0.45 | |
22.3 | 0.0 |
DEFENCE
On top of all that, his defensive contribution is also very healthy, as suggested by that initial “more than two tackles” stat.
One thing that has stood out, which cannot handily be summed up with numbers, is how quickly he gets back into a right-back position when a move breaks down. His speed has helped with this, as well as a very clear idea of what appears to be a very complex role.
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But back to the numbers.
Only two City players have made more recoveries per 90 minutes than Cancelo in the Premier League this season — Rodri and Fernandinho — and he is fourth for possession won in the final third, showing that he has been one of the team’s most effective counter-pressers in advanced areas. (Mahrez, De Bruyne and Gundogan and are ahead of him).
‘Hold on a minute, The Athletic. True what now?’
A quick explainer: it’s hard to highlight good defensive contributions for players in teams who have a lot of possession. So by doing some maths, the stats guys can get a better idea of how good a player is defensively even if they aren’t making tackles and clearances left, right and centre. And it turns out Cancelo is pretty handy.
We can still learn quite a bit from the simple, concrete numbers, though.
Below is a map of Cancelo’s defensive actions this season, which is quite telling in its own way.
The green dots show that the majority of his fouls have been committed in the opposition half, and the number of fouls compared to tackles in advanced central areas shows that he is disrupting opposition counter-attacks even when he can’t do so legally (some might call that tactical fouling).
Many of Cancelo’s interceptions have been made centrally, helping to take the pressure off his defence in deep areas. The graphic below shows his interceptions since December’s Manchester derby, when City adopted a more attacking approach while remaining defensively solid.
All in all, Cancelo is having an incredible season. It is quite some turnaround given his debut campaign was pretty lacklustre.
“He was confused in the beginning,” Guardiola said recently of a man signed from Juventus at the start of last season. “He expected something that we could not offer him.”
In short, Cancelo expected to play as a traditional, forward-thinking right-back and struggled with being asked to come into midfield — which is remarkable now, considering he didn’t even have to bolt on the attacking element back then.
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The main change in him, and the reason he has thrived this season as a jack of all trades (and a master of most of them), is a shift in his attitude.
“The most incredible thing from Joao is that now he is another man — a completely different man from when he arrived,” Guardiola at the end of last season, at a time when the City analysts were hardly thrilled with Cancelo’s performances and seemed to aim most of their in-game instructions in his direction.
“We needed time to understand each other, him to me and the team, and me to him too. What I want is the behaviour that he has been doing since the restart (post-lockdown last June).”
He is a private character, one of the quieter members of the City squad (he doesn’t speak great English, but is said to be improving) and at first, sources say, he did not fit in with the rest of the group too well, often looking like a bit of an outlier. As Guardiola said, that began to change during the three months of the first lockdown, and we now see a player who is comfortable, and happy, to be asked to carry out any number of roles on the pitch.
The City coaches were encouraged by his intelligent performance against Arsenal in October, when he switched between right-back and midfield roles to shut down former Guardiola No 2 Mikel Arteta’s attempts to create overloads down their left.
Since then, he has blossomed into a crucial part of City’s revival, and quite possibly one of Guardiola’s best experiments.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)