What happened to Liverpool’s Naby Keita?

Naby Keita. Just a few years ago, his name evoked fervent exaltation in some sectors of the soccer analytics community – he was the young midfielder who could do it all, with apparently unlimited talents both attacking and defending. Now, he can’t get a game for Liverpool. What happened? To answer this question, I think it’s important to understand where Keita started. Following an impressive maiden season in Europe at Istres, he began 2014-15 playing a combination of defensive midfield and central midfield at Red Bull Salzburg in the Austrian Bundesliga. Even as a defensive midfielder, he pushed the ball…
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Searching for Sergio

As Pep Guardiola has just informed us, this weekend Manchester City will play one more time without their talismanic striker Sergio Agüero. As an Independiente fan, I’ve followed Agüero’s career since he was a teenager playing alongside the likes of Gabriel Milito and Daniel Montenegro. He’s 30 years old now and has never been the most durable player, so the question for Manchester City is inevitably how to replace him. Even for a star of his quality, it’s a much harder task than you might expect. It’s easy to say that every player is unique. But Agüero is particularly different from his peers as a…
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The 1st Annual Ballon d’Ata Awards

Today I got to thinking that the Ballon d’Or wasn’t flawed so much because it was a popularity contest, but rather because it didn’t have awards by position. Goals are very salient, and it’s can be tough to compare skills across positions. Lionel Messi may be a once-in-a-lifetime player as a forward. But is Virgil van Dijk just as significant as a center back? By the way, who’s the best fullback of all time – Paolo Maldini? He never finished above third in the Ballon d’Or voting, and there may actually be less debate about his supremacy than there is about Messi’s….
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