Celta Vigo have had a true rollercoaster of a season in the 2018/19 La Liga campaign. What started off as a year fuelled by decent ambitions and standard expectations, soon turned to chaos, despair and relegation battles until the very last minute of the competition. A lot of their problems stemmed from Iago Aspas’ injury halfway through the season similarly how his recovery brought salvation in the latter stages of it.
There are not many players who influence their teams as much as Iago Aspas influences Celta Vigo, bar maybe Lionel Messi and Barcelona, but as with much everything else, the Argentine is simply off the charts and just being compared to him in this regard means that Aspas has truly risen to the occasion.
This tactical analysis will look to shed some light onto Iago Aspas’ brilliant season at Celta Vigo which saw him singlehandedly save his team from the jaws of relegation and help preserve their La Liga status.
Player overview
Iago Aspas is a tried and tested veteran of the game. With 31 years already on his back, he has gone through thick and thin with Celta Vigo, the team he joined as an eight-year-old kid who lied about his age so he could get in, and will most likely have to be carried out on a stretcher when he decides to retire at the very same place he started his adventure. And that, we can say without a shadow of a doubt. He did have a short spell with both Liverpool and Sevilla meshed somewhere in between but his heart was in Vigo the whole time.
Standing at 59 (176cm), Aspas is not really a dominant presence in the box, and with his career slowly approach the twilight, he has lost some pace and stamina, but that doesn’t stop him at being one of the deadliest strikers in La Liga and quite possibly, one of the greatest overachievers in the world.
His predominant position on the pitch is that of a clear-cut striker as he spends 56% of his time there but he is also versatile enough to slot into a more deeper, number 10 role or that of an attacking midfielder (8%) but also to wider areas as a wide right-midfielder (14%) and a right-winger (19%).
Reviewing the stats
As much as we love to go into analyses of whole teams, dissecting the details of what makes a team tick; what makes them so special; what’s their greatest strength; what’s their favourite tactic, sometimes, and only sometimes, the answer is the most simple, and the obvious one. In this case, the answer is just a name – Iago Aspas.
And without exaggeration, Iago Aspas is certainly the bread and butter of this Celta Vigo team, the alpha and omega and the single most crucial piece of their gaffer Fran Escribás system. Even if he is not necessarily the most aesthetically pleasing player to watch and even if the things he does are not some of the best moves you will ever see on a football pitch, Aspas is as deadly as they get, and the stats clearly support it.
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