Karim Adeyemi has become one of the revelations of the Champions League. Left your business card in the first game, at the Sánchez-Pizjuán, where he alone caused three penalties in the first half. In the match live, we already warned MARCA of its potential. On the second day he caused another one and, after four rounds, he also accumulates three targets.
His high performance does not go unnoticed by any of the big clubs. Although he is a player followed since he was a youth -Chelsea, Barça or Liverpool, among others- it is now when his name sounds louder. A month ago he was related to Bayern Munich, a team he came to as a kid and from which walked out the back door accused of indiscipline and that he completely denies. Time seems to have healed the wounds and I would not frown upon returning.
However, the Bavarian team seems to have competition. According to the journalist of the German publication Sport1, Florian Plettenberg, the agent of Adeyemi met in the capital of Spain with representatives of Atlético and Real Madrid.
The German player also met with Inter Milan, so the dance has begun to leave the Austrian Red Bull Salzburg, a team and a league that are starting to outgrow him. In the domestic championship, where you already have the title almost in your pocket, has become the main star and top scorer, with 10 goals in 12 games (one goal every 86 minutes), spread over seven games. Therein lies its best virtue: definition.
Adeyemi He has fired 32 shots, of which 25 have been between sticks, which represents a 78.12% success rate. The 19-year-old knows how to take advantage of the opportunities he generates, since for his expected goals it should take 8 points instead of 10. Additionally, he demonstrates some ability to improve those chances with his shots, as evidenced by his expected post-shot goals or xGOT. The location of your shots raises the probability of scoring to 9.68, an increase of 18.34%. from the pre shot occasion to the post shot.
The pearl of Salzburg is one of those who prefers to approach to shoot as close to the goal and, generally, prefers not to shoot crossed. He does not have a preferred place to put the ball, although it is true that four of his goals have reached the right stick.
And the best thing is not only that he defines well, but that his goals usually have a high value. Of the 13 goals he has scored between the league and the Champions League, five of them have served to open the scoring. Their ability to generate opportunities is a quality that is highly valued.
At Salzburg they know what they have. They bet on his signing despite that rebel poster that had been hung after his departure from Bayern. They started giving him minutes in Liefering, the second team, but soon they raised him. After a first campaign, the second already alternated between the two. Last season he was already a full-fledged Salzburg player.
Although his performance last season was remarkable, its explosion has been this course. Much of the blame is on the slight change in your positioning on the grass. The previous season he acted across the width of the field using the center part a lot, coming from behind. This season it does more on the sides, especially on the left, leaving the central zone only for actions around the area. So much radius of action leads him to be a player with constant presence in the offensive game of his team. And it has served to increase his scoring ratio.
In order to create those opportunities we were talking about, Adeyemi uses her acceleration a lot. We are facing a player capable of traveling 30 meters in 3.78 seconds. Those first few meters give him a decisive advantage over the defenders. It is his main virtue before the shot, but not the only one. He is a footballer with a wide variety of actions, with dribbling and passes on the edge of the area as another of the characteristics that show his radius of action. Its range of possibilities to decide what to do are reasons why it is difficult to contain and why it is often the subject of many faults, most in dangerous areas. There is no better example than those four penalties received in the Champions League.
Would Adeyemi adapt to LaLiga?
To answer this question, we made use of Smarterscout, a platform that provides services in scouting tasks and that evaluates a player’s performance and contributions to victory, their style of play and their skill levels compared to the players of his own position and in the context of a specific league. In this sense, using his data in the Champions League, a championship that is closer to the LaLiga level than the Austrian, if we put Adeyemi in the context of our tournament, we find interesting data.
its overflow capacity It would make him a player to be reckoned with by rival defenses as evidenced by his value 99. The shotObviously, it would be another quality that he would maintain at a high level (92), mainly through actions in open play (89).
The aerial game would not be his forte, but we can’t ask much more from a player who is 180cm tall. However, it would stand out for your ability to win ground duels and recover the ball (82). His ability to carry out effective pressure to help the team recover up is another of his strengths.
Adeyemi is one of the great talents to come. He has already shown proof of this. It remains the question of seeing how it would perform in a higher-powered league, although we have just seen that it would not be unusual for it to give an optimal performance.
Between his weaknesses we could say that it is his physical ability, something not difficult to improve. It is striking that He has not finished any of the games he has played this season either in the league or in the Champions League, although it is true that in his short career as a professional, he has hardly had a muscle injury of just two weeks off. However, surely both Atlético and Real Madrid are clear about why he is a player they are interested in hiring. Its market value, around 20 million euros, is another incentive to show it up before it rises like foam.
* Documentation: Opta, Wyscout and Smarterscout
* Infographic: Tomás Alhambra
