Benjamin Pavard 2019/20 – scout report

Not everyone expected Benjamin Pavard to play such a central role during the first months at his new club Bayern Munich. The young Frenchman joined the German champions from VfB Stuttgart in this summer for a reported fee of £31 million. In the first 11 Bundesliga games, this season Pavard was in every single minute on the pitch. It’s the same for all four games of the group stage of the Champions League and the two DFB Cup fixtures against Cottbus and Bochum.

In this tactical analysis, we will look at the Frenchman’s role in the system and tactics of Bayern Munich and then examine what his greatest strengths and weaknesses are on the pitch.

Position and movement

The 23-years-old World Cup winner played in this Bundesliga season in every single game as already mentioned. However, he didnt always play in the same position. The Frenchman played as every part of the back four at least once. He played one game as a left-back, three as a centre-back and seven as the right-back. These are the numbers how he started the games, but it often changed throughout the match. For example, in the game against Eintracht Frankfurt, he started as a right-back and due to Jérôme Boateng’s red card in the 10th minute he had to occupy the German’s position, as the centre-back.

In the first two games under new coach Hans-Dieter Flick, he played as a right-back since the new man at the sideline chose Javi Martínez as his second centre-back beside David Alaba (Niklas Süle and Lucas Hernández are injured). The former coach Niko Kovač used Martínez just in four out 11 competitive games in which he was not injured as a centre-back. Considering these aspects, we can expect Flick to line up his team mostly with Martínez as one of his centre-backs and Pavard as the right-back and due to that, we’ll focus in this tactical analysis more on Pavard’s role as a full-back.

In his heatmap for the first eleven games of this Bundesliga season, we see that he played during the majority of the time as a right-back. Besides, his heatmap isnt typical for a modern full-back since he acts more defensively. Even though Pavard is also dangerous for the opposition in higher areas of the pitch as we will see later in this analysis, he started out his professional career as a centre-back and played in that position for many years where he developed his defensive mindset. Even though the Frenchman is this season at Bayern more offensive than compared to his games during the FIFA World Cup 2018, he’s still more defensive than the average full-backs nowadays.

When he plays as a right-back he mostly is positioned deep during the build-up. In some games, for example in the match against Mainz 05 on the third matchday, the Frenchman positioned on the same height as the two centre-backs to create a back three while the left-back who was, in this case, David Alaba pushed forward.