Leon Bailey is among the wingers with the highest market value in the Bundesliga, scoring five times last season and providing two assists in 29 appearances in the top German division.
The Jamaican joined Bayer Leverkusen in January 2017 from Genk and has since played 84 times.
During the summer transfer window, many media outlets reported that Bayern Munich was interested in signing him as an alternative to Manchester City‘s injured Leroy Sané.
However, the Bavarians instead bought the 30-year-old Ivan Perišić and Philippe Coutinho.
Nevertheless, the fact that the current champions of the Bundesliga had Bailey on their list shows what an incredible talent the young winger is.
This tactical analysis, presented in the form of a scout report, will examine Bailey’s abilities and outline the reasons behind his current market value of £36 million.
Leon Bailey Positioning and movements
Bailey’s coach at Leverkusen, Peter Bosz, prefers a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 formation, and the Jamaican usually plays as the left-winger.
In some situations, he and the second winger on the right side change positions, but most of the time, Bailey is positioned on the left wing.
Bosz wants his wingers to position wide to stretch the opponent, and due to that, the players in the centre have more space for passing combinations and starting the attacks.
Because of these tactics, the young winger usually positions himself extremely wide and sometimes even on the touchline.
These aspects become visible when you examine Bailey’s heatmap for all competitive matches he played for Leverkusen last season in the Bundesliga, DFB Cup, and Europa League.
However, this wide positioning gave another great advantage during the match.
Sometimes, the opposing full-backs and wingers don’t care that much about Bailey’s wide position and stay more central to keep their team’s compactness alive.
Especially then, the distance between Leverkusen’s winger and the opponent’s full-back gets bigger, and so Bailey can pick up a lot of speed when he receives the ball.
Besides, he’s among the fastest players in the Bundesliga, and his acceleration is especially impressive.
In light of this, he wouldn’t need that much space to pick up speed, but when the opponent gives him the time, it’s logical that it’s even harder to defend against him when he starts to dribble.
But the Jamaican doesn’t just use his speed to dribble past defenders.
His teammates also like to try to find him with a through pass behind the last line of the opponent’s defence.
His wide positioning increases the difficulty for opponents to track him, allowing him to start the run with some horizontal steps and then change direction at the moment the pass is played to avoid being ruled offside.
This gets visible in the shot below.
He made some steps into the centre and want to start a deep run in the exact moment when this photo was taken.
However, his teammate in possession didn’t pass the ball, and so he stopped the vertical run, got back to the height of the last defender, and once more ran horizontally for a few feet before changing direction.
This time, the player on the ball plays a good through ball, Bailey receives it and scores.
Leon Bailey Dribbling and crosses
The young Jamaican loves to be on the ball and permanently asks for it, which explains why he’s got on average 72.98 actions per 90 minutes last season in all competitive matches for Leverkusen.
Furthermore, he mainly uses his strong left foot when it comes to dribbling, passing, crossing and shooting.
Considering this, he usually tries to get into positions from which he can pass or shoot with his left foot.
As a result, he mainly dribbles past the left side of defenders when in a one-on-one situation against an opponent, as seen in the example below against Bayern.
He starts on average 6.61 dribbles per match but just completes 55.1% of them.
As already mentioned, he loves to have the ball at his feet, but in some situations, he takes on too many opponents at once.
Bailey has got a great technique, and it’s hard to defend against him when he combines his ability to dribble past opponents with his pace.
But meanwhile, all clubs in the Bundesliga know how dangerous he can be when you gift him too much time and space.
As a consequence, the opponent’s players try to support each other when he gets on the ball as you can see in the example below.
However, he’s not always able to solve these situations as successfully as in the shots below, and so his success rate is not that high.
However, this situation showcases his exceptional ability to evade defenders.
Since Bailey is a left-footed winger, he doesn’t often dribble inside; instead, he changes the direction of his movement to be in a good position to cross or shoot with his left foot, as shown in the images above.
In light of this, one of his typical dribbles is down the wing, where he has the ball at his left foot, and then crosses the ball into the penalty box.
The Jamaican crosses on average 5.22 times per game, and not every single one of them is high since Leverkusen’s usual single striker, Kevin Volland, isn’t a specialist when it comes to aerial duels.
In light of this, he tries to find the best type of cross and deliver this one.
In both examples below, he makes low crosses to find his teammates in the middle.
In the first case, he hasn’t got any choice since Volland is the only one in the centre and a high cross wouldn’t make sense.
In the second situation, he has got two teammates in the centre but plays a long low cross to Karim Bellarabi since he hasn’t got any opponent who is marking him.
Leon Bailey Set-piece specialist
When the Jamaican is on the pitch, he takes almost every corner, as well as most of the free kicks.
We already heard that he crosses quite often during a match.
However, Leverkusen converted just one of Bailey’s corners last season into a goal.
Also, they signed Kerem Demirbay, who is beside Bailey and Julian Brandt now a third player in the squad who can deliver great crosses and corners.
In light of this, it’s questionable how many corner kicks Bailey will deliver this season.
Two out of his five goals last season in the Bundesliga were direct free kicks.
Bailey is able to combine precision with power when it comes to his shooting ability.
In addition, he looks at where the goalkeeper positions himself and based on that he chooses the corner.
In the first example below, the goalkeeper is positioned more in the right corner even though his wall is on that side.
Due to that, Bailey fires a shot into the top left corner to score.
Usage of pace to help the defenders
When we look at his defensive contribution, he mainly uses his incredible speed to win defensive duels.
He makes, on average, 4.01 recoveries per game, which is quite good for a winger.
The young Jamaican sometimes gets caught out of position, but then uses his pace to make up some ground to get into a duel in which he mostly uses his physical strength to win it, as you can see in the images below.
Conclusion
As this analysis has shown, Bailey already possesses incredible ball skills, even though he’s only 22 years old.
His undeniable speed, combined with his excellent technique, makes him a nightmare for every defence.
Also, he could be an even more valuable player if he could work on his goal threat since he scored just five goals last season in the Bundesliga.
It will be interesting to watch how often Bosz will let him play and how the Jamaican will perform this season.
