Gabriel Magalhaes: Data Analysis
Over the last decade or so, Ligue 1 has become an abode for young defenders to come through, impress and make an impact on a global stage. The World Cup-winning team of 2018 only went on to establish that fact in the most perfect manner and the process of churning out promising defenders hasn’t quite stopped yet.
Amidst all of the other defensive talents that have come up in Ligue 1 — the name of Lille’s Gabriel Magalhaes has been coming up a lot in the last few months. Big names like Arsenal, Everton, Manchester United and Napoli have been linked with a move for the Brazilian and it has made many wonder as to how good the 22-year-old really is.
Carlo Ancelotti seems to be looking at the idea of signing a central defender — something that the Toffees failed for in the summer of 2019. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is said to be going after a left-footed centre-back and that has led to links with the likes of Pau Torres and Benoit Badiashile. Napoli, on the other hand, seem to look at Gabriel as a replacement for Kalidou Koulibaly — even though they did sign Hellas Verona’s Amir Rrahmani in January.
Arsenal seem the closest to signing him, with Mikel Arteta’s main priority currently being a left foot-right foot combination at the back or a left-footed centre-back who can play on the left of a back three like Kieran Tierney in a lot of their games post-lockdown.
This report looks at Gabriel in detail and looks at how he does in the data side of the game and analyses it in some detail. The next part of this analysis will look at the Brazilian’s on-pitch actions.
Who is he and what’s his playing style?
On paper, Gabriel has been a typical Lille/Luis Campos investment. The defender was roped in by the club in northern France from then Brazilian second division club Avai in the January of 2017 for just €3 million. He was loaned out to Troyes and Dinamo Zagreb II before eventually breaking into the first team in the 2018/19 season.
He became a regular at centre-back in the 2019/20 season under Christophe Galtier and it would be fair to say that he had a pretty good campaign by all means too. He started the season in defensive midfield and played one game there, but then went back to being Jose Fonte’s defensive partner in Les Dogue’s usual 4–2–3–1 shape. Beside Tiago Djalo and Fonte, he even played on the left of a back-three last season.
Even in the second-half of the 2018/19 season, Lille had played in a back four on a regular basis and Fonte was a regular defensive partner for Gabriel at that point as well.
He comes across as a player who thrives on being comfortable on the ball and has this technical approach to the game that stands out. He likes to construct play from deep and can use both long balls and short balls to help in the build-up of attacks. Playing on the left side of the central defence plays to his advantage as it allows for effective use of his ball-playing abilities.
If that isn’t enough, Gabriel is pretty reliable off the ball as well, making him a complete defender. His height of 1.90m does come as an advantage in that regard. That is a rare commodity to have, especially when he is only 22.
Perhaps, that is one of the reasons why clubs are looking to sign him. And having realised how good Gabriel has turned out to be, Luis Campos looks set to cash in on talent and make a profit of over €20 million on the Brazilian.
On the ball
Playing with the ball at his feet is a key part of Gabriel’s armory, so it is important to go over that strength of his before anything else. He has been seen playing accurate long-balls to the forward players and carrying the ball into midfield and in that sense, he is a very progressive-natured central defender.
His stats prove that. As per FBRef, Gabriel averages 47.9 ball-carries per 90 minutes. The total distance of those stands at 277.4, which is pretty good in a general sense but the progressive distance is 155.1 meaning that more than half of his ball-carries are progressive ones. For a better perspective, it would be good to compare Gabriel’s numbers to other defenders in Ligue 1 and then in Europe.
A brief look at the progressive nature of the other Under-25 central defenders in Ligue 1 says a lot about Gabriel. One reason for Danilo being so far ahead of everyone else is that he played in defensive midfield for Nice multiple times in the 2019/20 season and that escalates the numbers quite a bit.
Gabriel though, falls in the category of being very progressive in passing and in ball-carrying as well. As per FBRef, he played 4.3 progressive passes per 90 minutes and that is the fourth-best out of all the others that are included in this debate. He’s only behind Abdou Diallo, Danilo and Malang Sarr, who is now a free agent.
Comparing Gabriel to other players in a more European perspective would also be effective in this regard, considering left-footed centre-backs of a high level may be rare to find in the game today. The qualities that players like Gabriel offer are unique and because of their suitability to the modern systems, they are expected to be in high demand soon.
The graph for Europe is also a promising sight for clubs that are looking at Gabriel or even at Benoit Badiashile. Both are pretty close to each other when it comes to progressive ball-carrying and progressive passing and it is no coincidence that Man Utd have been linked with both the players. It shows what they currently demand in the market.
Dayot Upamecano is clearly the best of the bunch and Paris Saint-Germain’s Diallo is again coming up with very good numbers from a European perspective too. But when it comes to Gabriel, he very much falls in the same category as Upamecano and Diallo and even though he isn’t as good as them in that regard, he will only improve with time.
Now that it has been determined as to who the progressive players are, it will be pretty interesting to see how their distances of progressive passes are like and how Gabriel does in this regard. It will help us determine how penetrative his passing can be, in a relative sense.
For this, the idea is to include only those defenders that fell in the category of highly progressive players; or were in the upper right side of the previous scatter graph. Gabriel’s distance of progressive passes per 90 minutes stands at 386.7, which is pretty decent — even though it isn’t as much as the likes of Diallo and Upamecano once again. Clement Lenglet, who did pretty well in the previous scatter plot, comes across as another left-footed central defender who is very good at carrying the ball through passing or dribbling.
The above three charts say a lot about Gabriel and how he is on the ball. Whenever he gets on the ball, he looks to move it forward and it is one of the main traits that he currently possesses. A metric from Soccerment looks at a player’s main passing directions and going by that, 39 percent of Gabriel’s passes are forward passes and only five percent of them are back-passes. A big 38 percent of them are played towards the right.
The Brazilian plays as many 9.66 long-balls per 90 minutes and has an accuracy of only 39.7 percent, pointing towards how he is a bit better at keeping the ball on the ground. Gabriel also plays as many as 28.5 passes per 90 minutes into the opposition’s half, which is well more than an average of 17.1 passes per 90 minutes. That is a reflection of how direct he can be with his passing, even though it doesn’t really say much about how often he progresses the ball forward.
To determine how often he can progress the ball forward, we look at a graph that measures how often he uses progressive passes. To do that, we make a graph comparing his touches of the ball per 90 minutes and progressive passes per 90 minutes.
Through this, we figure out as to what defenders benefit from having more touches of the ball and which defenders play a high number of progressive passes despite having low number of touches.
We can clearly see that while Gabriel received the ball a good number of times per 90 minutes last season for Lille, he didn’t get it as many times as Joe Gomez, Upamecano, Jonathan Tah, Sarr or Diallo. And if he gets more of the ball, he will get more touches and as a result, his progressive passing numbers will go up.
It is important to note that the players who fall in other sectors of this graph aren’t bad defenders. The graph above has been modified to accommodate only players who play more than two progressive passes per game.
As a conclusion for Gabriel’s on-the-ball abilities, we can easily say that the Brazilian would absolutely love it if he gets more of the ball than he does at Lille. He is better at keeping the ball on the ground and circulating it forward with purpose — unlike a long-passer such as Pau Torres. If Gabriel plays in a system where there is a high emphasis on playing out from the back, he might just come across as a much better player.
Off the ball
Going by general stats, Gabriel makes 5.86 recoveries per 90 minutes, which is well above an average of 4.83 per 90 minutes. He has an impressive tackle success ratio of 70 percent and wins 1.77 tackles per 90 minutes. It shows that he won’t get too involved in tackles on the ground, but he does very well whenever he makes those tackles.
His tackling accuracy and tackles per 90 stats are well above average as well. When it comes to his aerial abilities, Gabriel is keener on getting involved in those. He attempted 5.52 aerial duels per 90 minutes in the 2019/20 season and won 3.58 of those. Overall, he has an aerial duel accuracy of 65.3 percent, which says a lot about him in that regard. As per Soccerment, he is pretty above average in the aerial department.
His physical attributes help him in this regard, as he weighs 78 kgs and has a height of 190cms. One thing that will say a lot about how he operates defensively is how well he does when applying pressures and how many pressures he applies.
To get a complete picture of Gabriel’s abilities in that regard, we look at how Under — 25 central defenders do in this aspect.
This suggests that Gabriel isn’t quite active when it comes to pressurising the opposition off the ball, but he is usually successful whenever he attempts that. That shows that he comes across as a laid-back defender in the defensive department and won’t rush into tackles or interceptions like his defensive partner Fonte would.
Galtier’s system has two centre-backs that need to complement each other well. To make sure of that, one centre-back is more aggressive in tackling and one is more possession-focused and laid-back in tackling. The second category is one in which Gabriel falls in.
Now that this has been determined, it will be interesting to ascertain Gabriel’s ball-recovery abilities. It will help us understand how reliable he is when it comes to regaining possession of the ball when it has been lost or whenever it is loose on the pitch. This would say a lot about his ability to take initiative and how much he complements his defensive partner and rescues the team.
Only five players in this category do better than Gabriel, when it comes to ball-recoveries for the relevant age group. Usually, this metric determines how well a player is positioned on the pitch and how intelligent he is in that regard. Regaining possession for the team comes through good reading of the game and astute understanding of what will happen next.
Another thing that determines the smartness and anticipation of a player is the number of interceptions that he makes on the pitch. While recoveries maybe enough to suggest how smart a player is, interceptions shows how an individual is adept at knowing exactly where to be in defensive situations when the opposition has the ball.
What we see above is an interesting observation, considering how similar Gabriel and Diallo seem to be in this metric and both are ball-playing left-footed central defenders. If a central defender makes more interceptions, it is either down to his playing style or because he team often defends deep.
PSG don’t have to defend deep in Ligue 1 and that is one reason why Kimpembe and Diallo don’t do exceptionally in this aspect. In Gabriel’s case, it again comes down to how he is more suited to a role where he is a bit more standoff-ish and the system taps into his strength of playing out from the back. And again, it comes down to how he isn’t someone who rushes into defensive actions and that is one assessment that we derived from the pressures metrics. Galtier anyway doesn’t really want him to get as involved in defensive battles as Fonte.
Another big aspect of judgment for a central defender is the art of heading the ball. The clubs that are looking at him — Arsenal, Man Utd, Napoli and Everton play in leagues where there can be a big need for being aerially dominant and reliable.
Badiashile, who is known for his aerial prowess, certainly does well in this regard and a lot of it can be down to his high aerial involvement as well. Gabriel though, seems to fall in the category of players who can relied on in the air. The graph doesn’t exactly have a quadrant, but the Brazilian would lie in the quadrant of someone who gets involved in a high number of aerial duels and he wins a good percentage of them too.
And perhaps, that is why clubs are looking at him. He might not be someone who would indulge himself in the defensive hustle. The other defenders in the team would rather do that and while Gabriel would rather standoff, he does a fair job whenever teams bypass his team’s midfield.
Overall conclusion
With Arsenal currently closest to signing him, Mikel Arteta’s system would tap into Gabriel’s strengths. It remains to be seen whether the Spaniard opts for a back four or a back three next season, but the Brazilian is ideally comfortable in playing in both the systems like he has at Lille.
Playing in a back-three beside someone like David Luiz would need Gabriel to be a bit more pro-active in the tackling traits and that would demand him to get involved in duels more as his experienced compatriot ideally needs protection from the two defenders beside him. With William Saliba also coming in, Arsenal have a solid basis of young central defenders that excel at progressing the ball forward in a system that will have an emphasis on playing it out from the back and players being progressive on the ball.
Saliba clearly has a higher tendency to go into tackles and win the ball and that is something which will help Gabriel a lot. Like Fonte, Saliba could well complement the Brazilian if they play in a back-four. While Tierney had to be a bit more active in winning the ball last season, it was down to how Arteta had to adapt his system and be more pragmatic. Playing deeper than Arteta would like made the role of a left centre-back look much different to what Arteta would want.
As for Man Utd, it seems as though their search for a left-footed central defender will move on, even though Gabriel might have been the perfect player for them. His ball-carrying and ability to pick out the passing lanes in opposition midfield would take some burden off Nemanja Matic, who wouldn’t have had to play as an auxiliary centre-back whenever United built from the back.
