Vitinha has morphed into one of the world's best midfielders

It may be easy to farm stats for PSG in Ligue 1, but what Vitinha is doing this season does not deserve to go underappreciated.

Although the top three in Ligue 1 are separated by just two points, reports of a serious title race would be greatly exaggerated. Defending champions Paris Saint-Germain remain the overwhelming favourites as they are leading the way and have only allowed their rivals to remain in touching distance through a combination of regularly rotated lineups and some unserious performances.

Injuries to star attackers and full-backs have not helped PSG’s cause, leading their Expected Goals numbers to drop from 2.61 per league match last term to 1.71 so far this season. By that metric, theirs is only the sixth-best attack in the division right now behind Monaco, Marseille, Lens, Lille and Strasbourg. If not for their deepest-lying midfielder, things might even have been worse for Luis Enrique’s side.

Vitinha is the leading assist-provider in Ligue 1 having set up 6 goals, which also puts him joint-top of the big five leagues alongside Marcus Rashford as well as Luis Milla of Getafe. A set-piece tiebreaker criterion would give the Portuguese international the top spot since all of his assists are from open play. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (with 2) is the only one of his teammates to even have multiple assists.

It is worth noting that the ex-Porto midfielder is significantly overperforming his xA tally of 2.14, but his return of eight assists across all competitions already makes this his best-ever season as a creator. More importantly, it’s not as though he’s had a role change that’s led him to create more chances – he’s simply added yet another dimension to his game.

Of course, Vitinha was already exceptional last season. His standout displays in the Champions League combined with his team’s ultimate success in the competition led the enlightened voters for the Ballon d’Or to place him as high as third, though that does not absolve them of all crimes against the beautiful game such as voting Pedri out of the top ten (more on that soon). Needless to say, he was incredible in the league as well.

But now look at his radars from this season and notice the increase in his Pass OBV and Open Play xG Assisted, where he has gone from being around the 70th and 80th percentiles to now hovering around the 90th percentile. All the while, he has remained the very best of the best when it comes to deep progressions as well as dribbling/carrying.

As the personnel around him have regularly been rotated both voluntarily and otherwise this season, Vitinha has pretty much been given the keys to the park in the PSG midfield. He covers almost every blade of grass out there as he is involved in every phase of play.

The ex-Porto midfielder starts off very deep to regularly serve as the deepest midfield receiver in the build-up, even dropping to the fringes of his own box at times. Luis Enrique likes his side to be quite fluid (especially when facing a player-oriented press), so Vitinha also coordinates countermovements with his teammates to get up the pitch. When the opposition set up a mid block, he regularly drops very close to the centre-backs to pick the ball up and play incisive forward passes (or even take it forward himself occasionally), contributing to a large proportion of his deep progression stats. After the defending team is forced to retreat into a low block, Vitinha often is the one dictating PSG’s attacks through quick forward carries to break through opposition lines, snappy passes and a smattering of well-executed clipped aerial balls.

Again, it can be pretty easy to farm stats for PSG in Ligue 1, but some of Vitinha’s numbers are simply absurd. He’s averaging a whopping 145.3 touches per 90 this season, miles ahead of Aleix García, who is second in the big five leagues with 119.3. His average of 130 successful passes p90 includes 14.1 long balls at a mightily impressive competition rate of over 80% (no other player who even attempts more than 10 long balls gets close to that accuracy) as well as a staggering 17.8 passes into the final third (Fabián Ruiz is second in that metric with 12.6). His carrying perhaps goes somewhat underrated because he is the only player to be averaging in three figures for carries per 90 this term with 103.8, while Joshua Kimmich is second with 76.2. Despite seeing so much of the ball, the Portuguese maestro only miscontrols 0.69 times per 90 and is dispossessed about once every two games on average.

If you don’t care for the numbers so much, you can simply watch Vitinha to see how good he is:

All told, Vitinha is elite at almost all the things you could ask of your deep-lying midfielder – building up, securely receiving and retaining the ball, moving off it, providing progression with all manners of passing and carrying, and sometimes even entirely unlocking defences. He does all this while showcasing exceptional tactical intelligence, which also serves him well defensively as he often tidies things up in the counterpress and does not let his shorter stature limit his ability to win duels too much.

This exceptional degree of versatility makes the Portuguese international a pretty unique figure at a time when totally well-rounded midfielders are exceptionally rare. In fact, there might only be one other like him:

If you enjoyed this newsletter, we’d appreciate it if you would forward it to a friend. If you’re that friend, welcome! You can subscribe to The Transfer Flow here. We also have a podcast where we go in depth on transfer news and rumours every week. We’re on YouTube here, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by searching for “The Transfer Flow Podcast.” If you’re interested in football betting, check out this post on why we started Variance Betting.