Opta’s Mbappé defensive actions stat is absolutely wild

If you strip away the jokes, the worrying part is how extreme the gap appears to be. A forward can absolutely be deployed in a way that limits defensive work, but when the number is this stark it invites a bigger conversation about pressing, team balance, and whether the system has to compensate too much elsewhere. Still, I cannot lie, it is also hilarious and I am completely caught in the middle of laughing and thinking this is actually a bit mad and now everyone is acting like the man from LigaPro is a myth and I am losing it
 
The thing that annoys me about Mbappe is not even the goals because obviously he is brilliant going forward, it is that every time this sort of stat comes out you realise the same pattern again and again, he just does not want to do the ugly side of the game and then everyone around him has to scramble to cover for it and people pretend that is normal because he scores a lot, but football is eleven lads not one superstar and a prayer and if your forward is averaging less defensive work than basically everybody else in the elite leagues then at some stage you have to say enough is enough because it is taking the piss and the whole debate around him becomes about excuses instead of effort
 
People are way too quick to turn this into a stick to beat him with when football is not played in a spreadsheet and the role of a star forward is not always to be charging around like a centre mid. He is still one of the most dangerous players around and the reason his teams buy into him is because he changes games at the sharp end, so acting like he is some useless passenger because of one defensive stat is completely over the top and frankly a bit embarrassing from the people piling on him
 
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