What bothers me about Paqueta and also just the entire team honestly, is that he doesn’t fight through contact at all. Don’t get me wrong, the way he slows down the game combined with his quick feet, he’s always going to be a player fouled frequently. But he looks for fouls rather than trying to actually play the game sometimes.
A lot of our team does that and it’s SO frustrating. Our build up play has been lethargic for years and it doesn’t help with there’s so many fouls. And fouls are a bigger part of the game in Italy than some other countries, but the players have no urgency to play through any contact ever. Chances are sometimes ruined bc someone goes down way too easy, or they do get clearly fouled but only because they literally turned their body to anticipate contact from the defender. Jack does that a lot too, really so many of our attackers do. Knowing how to win fouls is valuable and there’s a time and place for that. But when the whole team is consistently looking for fouls, it slows the game down to a halt, takes away any momentum we might have built, and on top of that we’re not a super dangerous team at set pieces.
Jack, Hakan, Suso, Paqueta, Piatek(awful at this), Samu(he’s just weak), all play so soft every game. Paqueta and Piatek have good frames especially, no reason for them to play like that. But relating this back to Paqueta, I remember reading out Brazil that he had good hold up play and good strength for a player of his style. I think he does, he just doesn’t care to ride contact and advance the ball. He almost intentionally puts himself in spots where he can win a foul, rather than just move the ball quickly. Also about Paqueta, I think he is, or could be a good player, but he needs a coach to kick him in the ass. If he was with Conte or Simeone, he’d either A) not buy into the hard work, get dropped and fade into nobody or B) buy into the system, stop being a pussy, and use his natural talent and longer frame to be a good player.