Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds launches himself in attack, committing numbers in the spaces luiz seeks to protect. The Brazilian foreign midfielder will have to be at his best if he wants to save the white wave from overwhelming Villa’s back line.
However, given its shape for the club and country, and the chest certainty with which it has been playing lately, one imagines that Luiz will see the Leeds game more as a welcome challenge than as an intimidating event.
Since football returned from the break imposed by the coronavirus pandemic, the 22-year-old has been one of Villa’s notable artists and, despite everything, he is taking credit for the prospect that Pep Guardiola saw when Manchester City saw him He signed from Vasco da Gama in 2017.
The years after moving to City were not easy for Luiz, who turned down a painting permit for the UK and loaned it to Spanish club Manchester City, Girona, where cultural surprise proved abundant and playing time hard to find. He played the entire season and in December 2017 he told Globoesporte that “a player on the bench can never be happy. “
For the next campaign, he took a pre-season excursion to City in the United States and hoped to take into account the permission of British paintings; as Guardiola said at the time, “he’s a player with a huge ability to play for us. “But the bureaucrats at the back refused Luiz’s access to Britain. He followed another intermediate season in Girona.
Many players in similar positions may have lost focus, motivation or confidence, but Luiz was patient and, in the summer of 2019, came his luck. Aston Villa invested about $20 million to protect its facilities and was eventually granted a visa. Villa fought in the first part of the season, there were unstable performances by Luiz and some questioned his position on the team.
At a press conference in Brazil two weeks ago, he explained these start-up problems. “I arrived at Aston Villa two days before the start of the Premier League,” Luiz said. “It bothered me a little bit not to be, to spend a lot of time with [other] players. “
But he continued, and his perseverance is paying off. ” After the break,” he continued, “I had time to train, to prepare physically. It’s genuine change, [that and] getting to know the other players better. “
Your manager Dean Smith agrees. ” He needed to perceive his teammates a lot more,” Smith told Birmingham Live, “and not just in English. I needed to know the kind of passes players need from him, where they need him. be in the field. I needed to know more about them. The language helped, but rest helped him become a more fit player.
For Villa this season, he deploys as the innerest of Dean Smith’s three midfielders, offering the defensive platform that allows John McGinn and specific to Ross Barkley to take a leap forward in the attack His concentration, fitness and competitive marking – 3 things that shone in the 7-2 win over Liverpool, made him the best for the task and convinced Brazilian technician Tite to make him the owner of the Selecao at the expense of Juventus. “$85 million Arthur Melo man.
For the national team, Luiz’s role was slightly different, betting on Casemiro’s left in midfield as a defensive presence to counter the offensive impulses of left-back Renan Lodi and use some of his wonderful features: his long-distance passes. – Lose the team’s attackers the opposing defense.
With Luiz in the squad on the recent break with abroad, Brazil had a balance in its game that had been absent since Renato Augusto got rid of the camp in 2018 and with Luiz in the collection area in front of the four in the back, Villa could make it. 15 out of 15 in the Premier League on Friday night. For someone who, just two years ago and part of it, may simply not get a game in Girona, it is a remarkable demonstration of Luiz’s intellectual strength that such things can now be said about him.
However, the only thing that worries Villa fans is that Manchester City has not completely forgotten the talent of the Brazilian central midfielder that they were so willing to point out three summers ago in the deal that led Luiz to the Midlands, a termination clause. It has been inserted that he could, at the end of the season, however, allow Guardiola to recover his man.
Luiz spoke of his admiration for Guardiola and said that the Catalan City technician had taken a step forward in his game by “70%” during the two months he spent running in combination in 2018. The preference to return would be excluded.
For now, however, Luiz concentrates on the task at hand. “I haven’t had any verbal exchanges with the City or Guardiola,” he told his outside service, but he’ll be in the middle of a verbal exchange with Dean Smith. About how to warn Leeds. And if they can find a way to do it, Villa and his Brazilian midfielder will fall asleep On Friday night as Premier League leaders.
I write about a variety of topics, but I specialize in English, European and South American football. For Forbes, I write basically about two groups in my hometown, Tottenham.
I write about a variety of topics, but I specialize in English, European and South American football. For Forbes, I write basically about two groups from my hometown, Tottenham and Arsenal. Elsewhere, I have had reports, interviews and articles published in English and Portuguese through The Guardian, UOL Esporte, The Blizzard, GiveMeSport, Planet Football and Trivela. I am the founding editor of Yellow and Green Football, an online page committed to Brazilian football.