Back in 2015 a 16-year-old teenager by the name of Zinho Vanheusden, who was predicted a bright future, made the move from Standard Liege to Serie A giants Internazionale. After four years and a loan spell at Standard, Vanheusden decided to rejoin Walloon club on a permanent base. The transfer back to Standard wasn’t because of a lack of quality since Inter included a buy-back clause in his contract.
Now at 21 years of age Vanheusden has shown his potential at first-team level. But due to two long term knee injuries, his career has been a bit held back. As he is a regular at the youth team levels of the Belgium national team, Vanheusden is still Belgium’s hope to fill in the shoes of former Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany who left the national team.
This tactical analysis in the form of a scout report will delve into the strengths and weaknesses Vanheusden possesses as a central defender. In this analysis, we will also take a look at Standard’s tactics and why these suit his playing style. Note, however, that Vanheusden has only played the game against Beerschot due to suspension.
Vanheusden in possession
Standard aren’t known for being a team that likes to have the ball. Over the years, they have shown to be a team that likes to wait for a mistake from the opposition and to then pounce and exploit the huge space in behind the opposition’s defensive line to score. In 2019/20 under Michel Preud’homme, Standard tried to play more attractive football starting from the back, although this wasn’t always the case. Vanheusden’s ball-playing qualities certainly helped in playing out from the back. On average he plays 39,63 passes per game, of which 87,5% are accurate.
Most of these 39,63 passes per 90 minutes are lateral passes as he completes 19,57 of those per 90 minutes. 14,43 of the 39,63 in total are forward passes which means he only plays 1,89 backward passes per 90 on average. These numbers indicate that Standard vary between a patient build-up approach and a direct one. Because of Vanheusden’s ability to play vertically, Standard have the unpredictability factor in their game.
The reason why his passing stats aren’t higher is due to Standard’s lower possession-based approach to the game but also due to his positioning. The image below shows how Vanheusden takes up a deeper position to receive the ball. This gives him the opportunity to receive without pressure. But the disadvantage is that the distances and connections between his teammates become longer. Consequently, playing short forward passes is more difficult and Vanheusden has to play a predictable diagonal to the full-back or a long ball to the strikers.
Time on the ball
As discussed above, Vanheusden’s passes are partly forward ones. Most of these forward passes are long passes. Preud’homme asked the Belgian centre-back last season to play long when the occasion occurred. Consequently, Vannheusden was a huge asset to Standard’s build-up play last season. Back then, the Belgian had an accuracy of around 60% when playing long passes. This shows he is reliable in this area of the game.
In the example below, Vanheusden sees the space behind Didier Lamkel Zé. This space is created by Vanheusden himself by driving with the ball forward and giving Lamkel Zé a decisional headache. Thus a 2v1 situation on the outside is created.
