Frenkie de Jong

[Birdy]

People start hyping him again as DM, after a game against a 10-men relegation side, and after him being MEH to say the least in that role.

When will the lesson be learnt?
Frenkie will NEVER EVER be able to play pivot, it's not in his nature...
There is a reason why a 34yr old starts ahead of him.

I am posting below a great piece on the AThletic by John Muller with the title "What is Frenkie de Jong?", explaining (ONCE AGAIN) why he would never be a DM

 

[jamrock]

Frankie de jong, the worst best not world class, world class Midfielder in the WC.

80 big ones well spent.

 

[Birdy]

What is Frenkie de Jong?

John Muller
Sep 12, 2022

[PART I]

Everyone knows Frenkie de Jong is a once-in-a-generation talent if only he plays in the right role. It?s just that nobody is sure just what role that is.

Erik ten Hag brought De Jong up to Ajax?s first team from the academy ranks as a centre-back, then converted him into a freewheeling defensive midfielder. At Barcelona, Ernesto Valverde tried him as the heir to Sergio Busquets before deciding he was more of an Ivan Rakitic in central midfield.
When Ronald Koeman took over at Camp Nou, he said it was obvious De Jong needed to play in a double pivot, where he had used him with the Netherlands national team, only to end up playing him as practically a second striker for Barcelona. His latest Barcelona coach, Xavi, has tried all of the above, and yet at 25 years old De Jong doesn?t even have a sure place in his team.
This is not how it was supposed to go for a player who once drew breathless comparisons to Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff.
People don?t talk about you like that unless you?re different from everyone else on the pitch. But there?s good different, where coaches shuffle around their best players and invent new tactics to accommodate your genius, and then there?s? the other kind

Here?s how De Jong is different, in one simple stat: he takes his time on the ball.

Out of the 156 midfielders to have received at least 250 passes for one club in the last five full seasons of the Champions League, De Jong ranks first for the longest average time before his next action (3.0 seconds at Ajax). He also ranks third (2.9 seconds at Barcelona).
Go ahead, read all that again. Mix yourself a drink and put your feet up ? De Jong will still have the ball when you?re ready to continue.

That?s not necessarily good or bad. Some of the world?s best midfielders are leisurely in possession, such as Manchester City?s Bernardo Silva (2.9 seconds) or Joshua Kimmich of Bayern Munich (2.8). Others, such as his Barcelona colleague Busquets (2.2), keep it moving.
But even if a stopwatch doesn?t measure quality, it can capture something about style.
Koeman, who knows De Jong as well as anyone after coaching him for the Netherlands and Barcelona, once said that his countryman?s most extraordinary quality is patience: ?In a lot of situations, he has the ability to postpone the decision when in possession, and then to give a pass from which everyone thinks, ?Hell, yeah. Excellent thinking ? that?s how simple it can be?.?

One reason footballers don?t spend longer on the ball, of course, is that the other team would like to take it away from them. If you?re the type of player who likes to ?postpone the decision?, you have three basic options: you can play in a part of the pitch where the defence won?t chase you, you can beat their pressure, or you can run away from it. De Jong does all three.

Let?s start with his positioning.
Since space and time are hardest to come by in the middle of the opponent?s defensive block, a player who wants to have more of them will move deep or wide ? or, in De Jong?s case, both. He likes to start the build-up between his team?s centre-backs and the left-back, where he can receive the ball in space, facing play.
[gfy]https://archive.ph/PjQS5/67369f9020c7446083262fa26721e29853e8697f.gif[/gfy]

It?s a good spot for him ? De Jong says he?s at his best as ?the first player to receive the ball from the defence and link with the attack?.
Dropping to a position outside the centre-backs makes it easy to collect the ball from your back line, and the natural rotation his movement sets off ? left-back up the wing to make room for him, winger into the midfield area where De Jong used to be ? helps scramble the defence, creating lanes for him to play forward.

Opponents need a plan to defend this rotation. If the player who would normally mark De Jong in midfield follows him deeper, it leaves a hole in the centre of his defence. If another defender switches to take him, it frees up a nearby passing option. And if they don?t sort it all out fast and get their angles right, De Jong gets time on the ball to do his thing.

 

[Birdy]

[PART II]

Space is great if you can find it, but sometimes you have to earn time on the ball the hard way ? by beating a man. De Jong loves to do that too. ?You can hardly put him under pressure,? Ten Hag has said. ?That is such a great gift.?
A lot of Barcelona midfielders have a go-to move to escape pressure. Busquets likes to show the ball to an opponent and then pull it back, turning just enough to make the tackler miss. Xavi, when he played, would tempt a defender around one side of him and then wheel in a circle with the ball apparently glued to his instep, like a matador sweeping a cape.

De Jong?s favourite move is basically the inverse of Xavi?s ?pelopina?. He?ll receive the ball like he?s about to turn to his left, the more natural direction for a right-footed passer. Then, when his marker cheats to that side, he jumps over the ball and spins to his right instead, using the outside of his right boot.

Even though the idea is similar to his now manager?s old turn, De Jong?s inside-out mechanics lead to a different outcome. Xavi would finish his slow, smooth circle ready to pass to a team-mate he had already picked out. De Jong?s jump-spin ends with him knocking the ball forward with the outside of his foot. His body is shaped for a dribble, not a pass.

Which brings us to the third and last way to buy yourself time on the ball: just run away from people.
According to FBref data, De Jong carried the ball 4.8 yards for every pass he attempted last season, which puts him in the 83rd percentile (the top 17 per cent) of all central and defensive midfielders in Europe?s top five leagues. If you only count forward-carry yards per pass, he?s in the 94th percentile. ?He is a wanderer, an adventurer,? Ten Hag has said. ?He?s always on the move, like a shark.?

When he gets going, De Jong is a straight-line runner who really only uses his right foot to dribble. The deception is in his body ? the way he shifts his weight to convince you he?s about to cut, the way he speeds up and slows down almost imperceptibly to make tacklers miss. He shrugs off contact like an NFL running back and dances over outstretched legs like a member of the Royal Ballet.
He doesn?t release the ball until a defender cuts in toward goal to try to stop his run, which opens a passing lane to the free man on the wing. ?He is among the best at pinning and dividing,? Xavi has said, using a Spanish term for making a defender commit to the ball to free up a team-mate.

That?s pretty much the deal with De Jong. He?ll try everything ? rotations, take-ons, long carries ? to postpone the decision when in possession. He?ll move the ball forward and commit defenders and find an open team-mate. His dribbling through midfield will disorganise the opposition in a way few players can. This is what makes him different.
Conveniently enough, he does all of those things best in one position ? as a defensive midfielder. So why doesn?t he play there much?
The short answer is that what?s best for De Jong may not be best for his team.

 

[Birdy]

[PART III]

Take a look at another passage from the Napoli game in February we showed you grabs of earlier ? the first leg of a Europa League play-off round tie when he started in place of Busquets at the base of midfield in a 4-3-3.
Barcelona have won the ball in midfield and are starting their build-up. Instead of staying in position goal-side of Napoli?s forwards, De Jong drops to just outside the defence, where he?s redundant, and holds the ball in front of his centre-backs for four seconds before dribbling back up into midfield after deciding there is no pass on.

By the time he picks a pass, nearly seven seconds after receiving the ball, he?s in a crowd of defenders with no good options.
Yes, De Jong has collapsed Napoli?s lines with his solo run, but his team are a mess, too ? everyone else is reacting to his dribble on the fly.

 

[Birdy]

[PART IV]

Compare that with a similar situation later in the same half of that 1-1 draw at Camp Nou, after Busquets has come on for the Dutchman with 25 minutes to go, shortly after Barcelona had equalised.
Instead of dropping to the ball, Busquets backs away and waits for his centre-backs to break through Napoli’s pressure. When he does receive in space on the half-turn, three team-mates are already making automatic runs, allowing him to pick out a streaking Jordi Alba without even needing to look for him.

Xavi hasn’t been shy about pointing out De Jong’s struggles with positional play.
“Frenkie is grasping a lot of tactical concepts that he did not understand before,” he said in February, after moving him back to central midfield for the second leg of that Napoli tie (Barcelona won 4-2 in Italy, with De Jong scoring their second goal of the night). “He’s learning how to be the free man in the midfield.”

Four different Barcelona managers have tried De Jong as a defensive midfielder in his three seasons at the club, and all four have ended up deciding against it.
Koeman came into the job in the summer of 2020 insisting his fellow Dutchman needed to play on the left side of a double pivot, like he did at Ajax and for his Netherlands side. That experiment lasted just half a season. “It is the player himself who has changed,” Koeman said when he returned him to central midfield.

It’s true that De Jong has discovered some things about himself in Catalonia. He’s a gifted off-the-ball runner who stretches the lines in Xavi’s new-style 4-3-3 and finds shots close to goal. His rangy, inconsistent defensive style, which covers a lot of ground but doesn’t win a lot of balls, works better in a high press than in his own half. Combine these qualities with his ball skills and you get an advanced midfielder who’s pretty good, sometimes great, even if he’s not special.
The one skill that does make him special — those long, disruptive, clock-eating carries out from the back — just hasn’t been worth building a side around.

In fact, in Champions League play, both Barcelona and Ajax have a slightly worse expected goal (xG) difference across the next two possessions when De Jong takes off on a progressive carry compared with when he doesn’t. That includes only carries where he successfully moves the ball at least 25 per cent of the remaining distance to the opponents’ goal. Less successful carries, where he loses the ball along the way, might drag the average down even further into the red.
Maybe blowing up both teams’ shapes but leaving a hole at the base of your side’s midfield isn’t always a great trade-off at the top of the modern game.

There’s one more number worth thinking about here.
FBref tracks something called “on-off,” which is the difference between how a team perform when a player is on the pitch and when he isn’t, measured in goals or expected goals. This kind of stat is more familiar to fans of basketball or ice hockey, and there are good reasons why it doesn’t work nearly as well in football as in those sports. Still, the results can sometimes be suggestive.
In De Jong’s case, what on-off data suggests isn’t great. In his five full seasons of league play, across two countries and under five coaches, his team have never performed better with him than without him.

That hasn’t shaken fans’ faith that there’s a transcendent player in there somewhere, just waiting to jump-spin into the perfect position and dribble his way into the history books.
But while the right tactics might still unlock the genre-bending star everyone thought De Jong would become, there are now several years of evidence that it’s not so straightforward to carve out a role that makes the most of his extraordinary strengths while covering up his ordinary weaknesses.

Some special players spend their whole career looking for the right fit. And eventually, no matter how good you are at buying time, it runs out.

(Main graphic — photos: Getty Images/design: Sam Richardson)

 

[Fati_Future_BallonDor]

BBZirdy

 

[BusiTheKing]

That progressive carries xG thing is one of the most dubious uses of statistic i've ever seen.

The on-off is not a bogus statistic in itself, like the other one seems, but one where correlation is pretty obviously removed from causation. Also, sort of weird to include this stat and not mention that it tilts in his favor this season.

Very strange analysis.

 

[Porque]

Should have passed to Pedri

 

[Klysmakabouter]

really didn't think he looked slow at all. was all over the place. was behind the pass that sent them down to 10 men. then kept the house in order. not a big challenge but handled it flawlessly for me. if other midfielders deserve praise for such a game, so does he.

It is weird. Either he is world class or he is complete and utter shit if you believe the people here. No middle ground when FdJ is concerned. I thought he played well too.

 

[Joan]

Did well against Elche. The pass which resulted in the red for them was his best moment. Quick, well weighted through ball, and a clear cut chance had Lewa got through.

Had some decent attempts at lobs but don't think any was successful.

Wasn't challenged defensively.

 

[Birdy]

It is weird. Either he is world class or he is complete and utter shit if you believe the people here. No middle ground when FdJ is concerned. I thought he played well too.

If you read the 4 part analysis I pasted here, it's full of middle ground.
It just concludes that his strengths do not fit Barca

 

[BusiTheKing]

the team is still built around Busquets. someone who fits "barca" just means someone in who can fill the role of Busquets. if that's out requirements, we might look 30 years and not find our guy.

i'd forget about this monolothic idea of a "barca," and see what kind of team we could actually build aroung someone like Frenkie. he can't do what busquets has done he can do a lot of other stuff.

 

[Andresito]

How would you prioritize defence/possession in a DM?

Busquets in his prime was a monster in defence, no wonder he was called the Octopus of Badia. Great reading of the game and long legs made him intercept a bunch of balls, as scrawny as he is he wasn't afraid of going into challenges. He was great at shielding the defence, as well as being a saviour/reference point whenever we were pressed high.

Looking at the most successful 4-3-3 teams of recent times, they've all had defensive minded DM's. I'm thinking of Casemiro, Fabinho and Rodri.
Still OK on the ball, and at times they can look comical or make simple mistakes due to their limitations, but all in all they do their DM-job very well.

Frenkie I believe is more the opposite. Good in possession but limited in defence.
I think we should look for a defensive minded DM who's capable on the ball, he doesn't have to be prime Busquets. It needs to be one who knows his limitations and can release the other CM's. Frenkie isn't that guy imo. At least there's a better market for pure DM's rather than one who's world class in both defence and attack. That player doesn't really exist today, not yet at least.

 

[Birdy]

the team is still built around Busquets. someone who fits "barca" just means someone in who can fill the role of Busquets. if that's out requirements, we might look 30 years and not find our guy.

i'd forget about this monolothic idea of a "barca," and see what kind of team we could actually build aroung someone like Frenkie. he can't do what busquets has done he can do a lot of other stuff.

You clearly didn't read a single sentence from the article.

It's not about a monolithic idea, it's about certain characteristics like passing accurately first touch, positioning correctly to receive and release, and giving tempo (making the clock 'tick') to the team
None of those are in Frenkie's locker, and that's a problem.

Given what we have seen from him under 4 different managers so far, he is not worth 'building a team around him'

Frenkie I believe is more the opposite. Good in possession but limited in defence.
I think we should look for a defensive minded DM who's capable on the ball, he doesn't have to be prime Busquets. It needs to be one who knows his limitations and can release the other CM's. Frenkie isn't that guy imo. At least there's a better market for pure DM's rather than one who's world class in both defence and attack. That player doesn't really exist today, not yet at least.

Plus, the shortcomings mentioned above and in the article.

Plus, that he is not aggressive in pressing, and presses very little -> hence, he will never see an important game ahead of Gavi in the lineup