Yeah, he's definitely the right type of winger. In terms of his specific skill-set, I'm not sure about his actual abilities anymore.
He used to play on the wing in a 4-3-3 system but can't be viewed as a pure winger IMO because he tends to be attracted by the heart of the game.
In terms of actual abilities, he has lost a little bit his acceleration capability.
He's the typical under privileged Brazilian, he got his money and now he's happy, obviously nothing wrong with that but for those calling for work rate and motivation won't get it from him, his motivation is money and now he has it, he was said to have similar potential to Neymar coming out of Brazil, but look at their inprovment since coming to Europe!
Lucas could be great if he wanted to become great, but his heart isn't set on becoming so, we need up and coming players chasing glory, be it personal or team orientated.
1. You're absolutely right. Some said he was better than Neymar because he used to play against him younger many times.
2. Lucas is a very nice and humble guy. The issue is his game lacks diversity because maybe he has not the real ambition to be one of the greatest players and work hard on his weaknesses (accuracy & read of the game).
He hit a brick wall in his development. It doesn't help that Ligue 1 teams always sit deep against PSG and he does'nt have space to explode. But also, he's also played through the middle a lot of times which is weird. I kinda predicted this would happen actually, it was a mistake to go there.
Also this is a modern problem in Brazilian youngsters, since our teams got stronger financially our promises can only be bought by big european teams. That means usually they have very little space to feck up and develop. Which is specially bad when they have to learn a different type of game.
Back in the days even huge solidified promises like Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Djalminha went to smaller clubs (PSV, La Coruña..) where they had way more space to develop. Look at Coutinho, he hardly got a game at Inter, was bounced around in loans, and fortunately Liverpool took a chance on him. He easily could've been back to Brazil or some obscure place like China had one or two things gone differently, and who knows what player he'd be now.
Funnily, the players who opt to go to Shakhtar or Portugal usually have that nice blend of tough environment/time to develop/ and turn into pretty good players most of the time. Marlos seems to be the next one out of that 'factory'.
1. The issue is not level of the French league or a lack of space to explode. Lucas Moura is stagnating because:
A. Laurent Blanc is not the right coach to make him improve contrary to a coach like Unai Emery
B. He's a player who needs to play all the games to gain trust and start thinking on how to evolve his game. He was generally considered as a super sub, the 12th or 13th best player of the team. Illustrations below:
***** 2015/16: the offensive trio was comprised of Cavani + Zlatan + Di Maria. So, Lucas was essentially a sub
***** 2014/15: very good start then injury then Pastore has globally been preferred to be the 3rd offensive player with Zlatan & Cavani
2. Shakhtar is another story. The key man was Mircea Lucescu who is a great coach.
3. Portugual is a great place for Brazlian players for obvious reasons: easy league but there are 2-3 great clubs able to develop youngsters and the language.
To sum up my views, the issue is not the level of the French league or a lack of space but the inability of Lucas Moura to upgrade his game for 3 reasons
- Laurent Blanc who is more a manager than a coach in the sense that he doesn't like work hard to make the players better
- Lucas Moura has been considered as a secondary player in the last 2 seasons
- If you listen to all the interviews of Lucas Moura, he doesn't seem to be very demanding on himself.
The good news is we have a new coach - Unai Emery - who will challenge him.
If he fails to play a lot this season, he should search a more suited club.
