Under Marcelo Bielsa, Leeds United were dominating the EFL Championship in this campaign, and they managed to sit on the top of the table before the coronavirus break. Many players stood out and became the best of the league in these two seasons, names like Kalvin Phillips, Ben White and Pablo Hernández were nothing new to the fans now. Apart from these players, Leeds made a reinforcement to the team by getting the former Benfica winger: Hélder Costa from Wolves.
At the early stages of the season, Costa did not have many chances as he was still adapting to the team. Until the ninth game of the league, the Portuguese finally started his first game and gradually became a regular starter.
Currently, with 37 appearances in the league, Costa scored three and assisted three. The figures might not be impressive, but his contribution to the team was much more than that. This tactical analysis is a scout report that examines the ability of Costa at Bielsa’s Leeds, as well as revealing his room for improvements.
Overview
To begin with, we want to give you some ideas of Costa’s role and positioning by comparing the Portuguese’s heat map with some best left-footed right-wingers of the Premier League. From one to four, the heat map belongs to Costa, Nicolas Pépé, Riyad Mahrez and Mohamed Salah.
Costa had the largest coverage on the pitch, and his activities and the shape of his active zone was very similar to Pépé at Arsenal. Comparing with Mahrez and Salah, Costa was more active in his on half while making an impact in zone 18 as well. This was because of the team’s tactics which required him to facilitate ball progression, providing the width and contributing defensively. We will explain these in details in the coming sections.
We also compared Costa’s offensive stats with the best wingers in the EFL Championship. As shown in this scatter diagram, Costa’s figure in terms of touches in the box per 90 was outstanding (4.69), higher than his counterparts. However, these touches might not be converting into goal opportunities as his xG per game was 0.19 only, just right at the average point.
When mentioning a left-footed right-winger, we might immediately think of prolific wingers like Arjen Robben and Salah. However, as shown by the heat maps and these stats, the job of Costa was a bit different from them.
