All In On Samuel Chukwueze
The 19 year old Nigerian from Villareal has surged onto the European scene over the last couple months, earning a national team call-up, injecting a bit of life into a poor league campaign for Villareal and dominating his short stretch in the Europa League. I would not be surprised to see some enterprising team with a big budget make a move quickly for Chukwueze as he's shown all kinds of promising indicators. Among players in the group stages at the Champions and Europa League, Chukwueze was:
-5th in Danger Zone progressions (passes or carries into the final 21 yard radius around goal). Ahead of him were a pair of Chelsea players in Hudson-Odoi and Willian, Iwobi and Messi. Chelsea and Arsenal destroyed their groups of unrecognizable Eastern European tackling dummies so their stats generally aren't too impressive to me, though Hudson-Odoi might warrant a bit of an exception. A few players just behind him on this list: Ousmane Dembele, Leroy Sane, Karim Benzema, Franck Ribery, Pedro, Riyad Mahrez, Isco, Suso, Raheem Sterling and Neymar. All in the top 25 but behind Samuel Chukwueze of Villarreal.
-9th in share of passes leading to shots. Almost 20% of his passes came within 10 seconds of a shot. This stat is generally dominated by strikers on the periphery of the passing attack who generally are only involved when they are looking for a shot, players with sub .25 passes per minute who are extremely advanced like Breel Embolo, Fredy Montero and Ishak Belfodil. The players at the top of this list who also contribute by passing the ball or carrying it for a pass or shot into dangerous areas are Mbappe, Dembele, Ronaldo, Messi, Salah and...Chukwueze. Hannes Wolf also makes it if you expand the list just a bit and a bit more gets you Fekir, Depay, and Vlasic from CSKA (another guy I really love). That's quite the list isn't it? Probably should end the article here but I just have to keep going.
-4th in yards progressed per touch (carry and pass combined). This is among non-goalies and deep central defenders who just hoof long balls. Over 8 yards per touch is a big number, you often see this from fullbacks tasked with lining balls forward. Attacking players who are actually involved in the offense (more than .3 passes per minute) you get Yann Karomoh, Chukwueze, Neymar, Brahimi, and Carlos Soler (another player I absolutely love, love, love, but one who presumably has a $50 million price tag).
-4th in completions above average (behind Kroos/Cazorla). This uses a model to predict passing completion% and compares actual completion % to that. He hasn't made too many passes but it's generally a stable number, if one that needs to be contextualized (which it has in this case).
So all that to say is he's moving the ball into dangerous areas a ton, completing a lot more passes than you'd expect, progressing forward in leaps and bounds each time he touches it, and shots come quickly after he's involved.
Now he just played 203 minutes against Spartak Moscow, Rapid Vienna, and Rangers but those 203 minutes were about as good as you could possibly ask for. As far as old school counting numbers: he racked up 8 key passes and 3 in-box shots, so this isn't a Jordan Ibe-type hoping for box production to come from solid open-play metrics, there is serious shot production already.
In his 500+ La Liga minutes he is popping over 2 in-box shots per 90 coming from the right side. Villarreal's 3 strikers are all just barely over 2 from the center forward position and no one else on the team is at 2. He hasn't racked up the key passes in the league like he has in Europe, but 1.3 is still decent production. His current numbers would be enough to be a star over an entire season: his KP+in-box shot production tops Lacazette, Sane, and Martial for example. These 700 minutes have provided a glimpse of a future star. He's just 19 years old on a team battling relegation and he's putting these numbers up. I'm all in on Samuel Chukwueze.
One note of caution to end the article; it doesn't look like he's quite ready to lead a line. He played up front vs Celta Vigo and basically did nothing in 55 minutes before being subbed off. When he's come from the right, he's just destroyed Huesca and Spartak. If Bayern are going to pay $60 million for Pulisic, there's a very strong case you might be better off and save a ton more money by spending on Chukwueze.