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TheGreatRossonero
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2016 1:54 pm
Posts: 1292
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Long time ago I was tempted to review his days in Italy after watch a juve vs Milan match, he was a truly insane talented player, later I check how Konami and some forums around the net were rating him, and I didn’t any kind of coherence in what those sets were triying to do, and I mainly focus in some stats that were bother me, since that I find out of place for what he showed in a regular basis in the 90’s.
zidane is a great passer; its evident he has very good passing accuracy in his general ground passing game too. he's a neat passer, and has a really wide range from which he can execute passes; one of his favorite passes is to control and then use a really wide outside of his foot curve pass down the touchline, and he's really great at improvising techniques in which to make a difficult pass. truly, some of the techniques he uses for passes are unmatched- really quite amazing execution.
but that's not enough to warrant high orange or red values in spa and sps to me - the problem is that he only even attempts a grounded attacking through ball maybe once out of 20 games? that ratio seems mental, but not a great exaggeration, especialy regarding his juve years. when zidane leads an attack with the ball forwards, 99% of the time either he makes space for a diagonal pass to the corner flags for the strikers (to the outsides of the center backs) into the box, or he tries some complicated dribble and shoots.When zidane has the ball in a deep position in which he can potentially make a dangerous through balls - and not lacking in runs with inzaghi, or other CF on the field, he never does.
it seems zidane really doesn't want to attempt those dangerous grounded through balls. maybe this is his way of playing, where he finds that too liable to turn the ball over, because in the build up phase zidane is pretty low risk with his short passing game. but that' can't be an excuse when we're talking about high orange or red values in spa and sps, that's a passing combo where making that through-pass when you can try it is always worth it. every player that has that combo deservedly regularly proves how effective and how dangerous grounded through balls are, and we both know there are tones of players that have much lower then high orange or red values in spa and sps that are still regularly trying, and succeeding grounded through balls, and we can all see how dangerous just that one ability, that ability of merely daring to try these dangerous through balls is. maybe another logical explanation for his disuse of grounded short passes is that he believes that he can build up the play to make a higher percentage attack on goal, but i don't buy this. he regularly makes really great 35+ yard long passes which are attacking, demonstrating an ability to very simply attack using good passing to move the ball precisely- aerially. Not only this, most provingly, at the moments where he could conceivingly attempt dangerous through balls- here i mean where a striker makes a run, and zidane has a clear lane to make a pass within20 to 25 yards away from the goal- he usually just doesn't do it; often he seems to not even consider it as an option.
i have a pretty big problem with his consistency in executing high sps demanding passes; he's just not consistent enough, he very frequently will mess up a pass just because of not putting enough weight on the pass, and he's even less convincing because his average sps is quite low actually. so far im actually more concerned about zidanes sps rating then his spa,his spa is around 92 or so, but his sps not only looks to average around an 82, but he has nearly always failed passes in terms of sps when he has truly needed high sps, anyone can put their foot through the ball and make a pretty damn hard pass once in a while; very frequently i've seen zidane fail that type of pass just because of a lack of sps, his spa is far from flawless either- he's failed the same type of pass due to lack of precision, and has often given the ball away on sloppy passes which i don't note down as they're not note worthy- just simple failures, to merit such a high spa, if you aren't frequently making passes at moments such like a riquelme, rui costa,laudrup, messi, cassano would constantly make, then at least you have to demonstrate in one or two amazing passes that you are capable of that caliber of passes, and then if your volume of the truly red spa passes is pretty low, then one should be at least nearly flawlessly consistent in orange and high yellow passes situations, like a xavi- which he isn't either.
If you just search rui costa pass there's instantly a great highlight reel with dozens of red spa passes, and one gem in 2003 to shevchenko against madrid and zidane himself. if you search riquelme, its all there. laudrup, xavi,messi, cassano, if you look for red spa from these players, you'll find it easily. i watched one 20 min video that supposedly had all of zidane's nt assists and key passes, and i don't recall there was a single red spa pass in there- it was all crosses and corner kicks or freekicks.
what consideration zidane does deserve is that the system he plays in is clearly less open then what the modern game enjoys, but at the same time systems are always built around the strengths of players, rui costa repeatedly and blatantly demonstrated how good and how dangerous his short passing was in the very same league as zidane
(i briefly watched some videos of him, its clearly there and worthy), and its such an important aspect that, for that ability he held over zidane alone, alot of people regard rui costa the better amf of the 90's- i base that on recalling vaguely somewhere that rui costa was actually voted as being the best amf of the 90's in seria a.
i wouldn't put zidane below 92 spa, and he could have as much as 93 spa- but anymore would be supported by nothing. he's a very accurate passer, but that's not a valid enough reason to say he deserves anymore would one say zidane deserves more spa then xabia lonso or xavi? he's easily behind alonso despite still being a very very accurate short passer himself. I wouldn't even really like giving him 93 spa, as I still feel that ronaldinho is more capable and dangerous, and proven with short passing accuracy in itself then zidane.
so 97-2000 zidane is around 92 spa, maybe 91 spa if harsh, 2002-2004 or 2004-2006 or so so far looks a bit better, as much as 94 spa, more incisive as well; you'll notice all of his best passes were do it in 2001 with madrid. i never saw any passes even near that when he was with juve or with the nt 1997-2000. but even looking at his madrid days, he's still a whole world away from a ronaldinho or messi level. i regularly see teammates make passes in zidane vs videos and matches which look about as good as the best passes zidane has made.
regarding sps, i doubt much more then about 88 sps is deserved to his juve era; his average sps is much lower then that as well.
I will see if can do a set from scratch for him, since these one seems far off from what it should.
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France
