Quote:
Originally Posted by 72off
interesting. soon-to-be 26 year old costa rican winger. played in costa rica for several years before moving to lower league belgium. nycfc plucked him out of the 2nd division after a solid 15 scorepoints in 2000 minutes season, and he has 14 in 1000 this year. kind of want to say it's a fish on a heater situation based on his history, and the fact that he has 0 goals in 13 for costa rica, but there's something there with this guy. obviously, if he's outperforming everyone but messi and suarez.
i wouldn't read too much into it
there's a massive amount of scoring variance in soccer in addition to limited samples and vastly different player usages and coaching philosophies
ie he could simply be playing in a system that funnels him the ball and anyone in that spot would be scoring
furthermore, costa rica infamously plays an extremely defensive version of soccer where they basically park the bus and hope to score on the counter or bank the point in a tie or try to win in pennos in an elimination game
regarding the variance - 3 of his goals happened in a 10 minute span where he came on as a substitute late in a game they were already winning and thus the opposition was going full on attack to which he didn't have too many defenders to content with when he got the ball in a forward position
it seems he's being used exclusively as a striker with nyfc whereas other teams other used him as a winger, costa rica has been utilizing him as the central striker but he's part of a group of 3 up front so the touches in the box are distributed more to others
nyfc does a 4-2-3-1 which funnels him the ball up front whereas costa rica does a 3-4-3
but he seems pretty good, he's scored well over his entire career and at 25 is just entering his prime, given he was sold for 400k and then nyfc got him as a free transfer this year it does seem like a good bit of scouting on their behalf
