Guaranteed to be crowned autumn champions, Paris Saint-Germain welcomed FC Metz to the Parc des Princes, during the 17th day of Ligue 1 this Wednesday evening. An opportunity to stock up on confidence and points before enjoying a little break for the end-of-year celebrations. During this last meeting of the calendar year, the Parisians secured a success (3-1) against the Garnets thanks in particular to a very good performance from the Portuguese midfielder, Vitinha. However, the former nugget of FC Porto has not been going through the best of times in recent weeks, notably with some up-and-down performances. A few days before Christmas, the light has indeed come from the native of Santo Tirso and the Parc des Princes can thank him.
His coach Luis Enrique had already publicly explained all the good things he thought of his player: “Vitinha can play as 8 as 6, but for a style of play like ours he will have time in 6. When you want to play and you have the quality, you can play in a lot of different places. I’m sure he would prefer to play in his natural position, but he has that high-level mindset to play in different positions.”, explained the Spanish tactician a few days ago. Against FC Metz, Vitinha did it again to support the Parisian midfielder, who has been in great difficulty lately between a Manuel Ugarte in clear form and a Warren Zaire-Emery freshly back from injury.
A goal, a pass and the Park goes up in flames!
Established in the 3-4-2-1 next to Manuel Ugarte, Vitinha quite simply produced a masterpiece against Metz. The Portuguese finished the match with 92% successful passes on more than 80 balls touched during the match. He lost very few balls, while being one of the elements of the Parisian axis to project himself the most. In attack, the former Porto player stood out perfectly to open the scoring. Found on the right, his South Korean teammate, Kang-In Lee, curled a ball in front of the goal. At the near post, Vitinha got ahead of the Metz defense to score with his right foot from close range (49th): “Kang-in started between the lines, but we wanted to have more space on the right side afterwards. We try to generate more situations, that allows me to change my way of playing, without making any changes, it’s very important. I always ask more from my players”, commented Luis Enrique, emphasizing the importance of pistons for axial play. Acclaimed by the Parc des Princes on several touches of the ball, he even set the stadium on fire with a little dribbling number near the central circle to quickly move forward in transition.
A scorer who becomes a passer. Indeed, on the second Parisian goal, if Kylian Mbappé takes the spotlight with this magnificent shot curled into the top corner, it is the Portuguese midfielder who does the hard work at the start of the action to therefore offer himself an assist decisive in addition (60th). This is a good way to end his year with 5 goals and 2 assists in the league in this first part of the season, which makes him the second best Parisian scorer behind Kylian Mbappé’s 18 goals. Because if Warren Zaire-Emery remains the darling of all Parisians due to his impressive maturity, we must not forget that discreetly, in the shadow of the 17-year-old darling of the Paris region, Vitinha is in the process of donning a preponderant costume – that of the leading and regular environment in the Parisian axis. This is enough to alleviate the summer departure of Marco Verratti or perhaps to send a message to the future Brazilian competition named Gabriel Moscardo…
