Following his stint over in the Bundesliga, Paco Alcacer has officially returned back to Spain, only this time, hell be donning the yellow kit of Villarreal. Of course, Alcácer is no stranger to La Liga, having previously played for both Barcelona and Valencia, but his career never took off at the former despite success at the latter.
Still, third time is the charm and the stage is set for the prolific centre-forward to hit the ground running – which he already did in a way on his debut – and help Villarreal find the consistency they seek.
This tactical analysis will be a scout report on Paco Alcacer as we’ll present his player profile with an in-depth overview alongside using analysis to see whether he fits Villarreal’s general tactics.
Player overview
Generally speaking, Paco can best be described as a more of a traditional no.9, a striker who’s ready to pounce on the ball inside the box and bring quality finishing to the table at the same time. His excellent movement and predatory instincts enable him to consistently overperform his expected goal values but also mean that he’s often at the right place at the right time to slot one home.
Apart from that, he is extremely well suited for fast, direct and especially transitional systems that favour a heads-on approach. Even though he is quite capable on the ball and can link up with his teammates quite well – as we’ll see further down this tactical analysis scout report – he is still best utilised inside the area and not in deeper positions.
Due to his excellent positioning, Paco can also be a constant threat in set-pieces and can use his pace to always threaten in counter-attacks. Defensively, he is quite aggressive and Villarreal can benefit from his tendency to press high and try and disrupt the opposition’s build-up.
This tactical analysis scout report will now use analysis to dissect some of his key traits and see how he could fit into Villarreal’s tactics.
Lethality inside the box
Even though Paco is not necessarily an out an out poacher, he could be described as something of a fox in the box. As we’ve mentioned earlier, he is most dangerous when moving inside the opposition’s danger zone as he can find the right openings to strike and make the most out of practically any situation.
We can actually see this from his tally of 13 goals from 9.2 xG in 2019/20 and 22 goals from 11.63 xG in 2018/19. In both cases, the Spanish international overperformed his expected goals values which does indicate he scores from situations that can often not seem promising.
But upon further inspection of all of his shots in both seasons, courtesy of Understat, we can actually see that most of his goals have a high xG value, meaning that the shots leading to those goals were actually taken from excellent positions and mostly inside the box.
Now we actually start to understand that Paco has this knack of truly being at the right place at the right time, often scoring goals from highly promising situations that could either be a) created by his teammates or b) made possible due to his movement and positioning.
Of course, the truth is probably somewhere between the two options but this on its own already signals that he has the predatory instincts we talked about earlier in this tactical analysis scout report.
Bu
