Why teams can't stop fouling João Félix
Why teams can't stop fouling João Félix
Figures at Atlético have been keen to urge protection from referees, but it's not a problem which they are merely the subjects of.
João Félix comes towards the ball, João Félix receives a pass and João Félix gets halted with a foul before anything else can happen. In a season that started with a hat-trick of assists versus Getafe, the Portuguese’s season since then has been more associated with this less gratifying scene.
Félix has been fouled more than any other player in Spain — relative to his minutes played — since the start of last season. The 22-year-old has suffered 3.9 fouls per 90 in this period, which is not only the highest figure in La Liga, but also across the top five European leagues as a whole.
Of course, it’s not a new phenomenon that talented players gets fouled a lot. The striking part for Félix, though, is the rate at which he gets fouled, compared to his amount of contact with the ball. In this same period, the Portuguese has been stopped in his tracks more often than Neymar — perhaps the most notorious attracter of contract in the game — despite receiving half as many passes per game as the PSG man. And closer to home, Félix gets halted more often than Vinícius Júnior; the most catalytic player in Spain at present, and who subjects his opponents to a constant barrage of high-risk defending.
The Atlético man’s reduced involvement, compared to other stars of the game, isn’t just anecdotal though. Félix’s reduced involvement in play is, paradoxically, a factor tied to his amount of stoppages. Quite simply, a player who only receives 30 passes in a game is less likely to put the opposition under pressure in respect to fouls and cards as the same player when he has twice as many opportunities to provoke those situations. The more persistent a threat, the less willing opponents are to seek interruptions.
Félix has this problem — and he has another in terms of location that, when put together, make for the unwelcome recipe behind his attraction of fouls.
In the 3-5-2 which has come to stick for Atlético, Félix is used as one of the two strikers (in theory). The reality is it’s a position that he can fit into as a means of affording him freedom in possession, and with Atlético’s off-ball approach being a conservative one, a place where his role is more in closing gaps in the first line than anything more complex or strenuous.
With Félix not being an orthodox striker — or even a striker at all, one could argue — his contribution in this context is largely rooted in unpicking the opposition’s shape. The Portuguese is most valuable to Atlético in generating creation, given his talent on the ball and the fact that he is a creative player in a team otherwise short of similar profiles. Teams who face Atlético know the approach against Félix is wholly different to every other player in his team.
The problem with the 22-year-old’s freedom is that it often becomes exaggerated to the point of detachment. To secure a reliable source of passes, Félix’s most frequent zone for receiving passes is on the left wing around the halfway line. It’s an area where defenders typically don’t follow him out, and where opposition players in general are either happy to allow the pass out wide or aren’t close enough to be able to cut the pass out in the process. For Félix, it is a safe zone to find the ball.
Yet it’s also where the issues begin.
With Atlético being conservative in respect to passing through midfield, as well in controlling the central area of the pitch with numbers, Félix lacks service into already-advantageous areas. To get there, it often falls on him to come outside of Atlético’s orthodox shape and generate the advantage through his own work, be it a dribble or a quick combination to get him to the next phase of play. When it doesn’t work though, Félix gets stuck on the edge of the game — lacking both touches on the ball and touches in areas that put the opposition closer to danger.
In that context, it becomes a near free-for-all in making sure Félix doesn’t pass. Low-consequence stoppages far from goal, before he can even get into his action, have become frequent. Teams don’t fear giving these up. On the days where Atlético lack inspiration — of which there are many — the opposition can cut possibilities off at the head of that inspiration, eliminating the possibility that something will blossom once the ball has left the Portuguese’s feet. Simply not letting Félix turn has become a victory for teams.
Of the 16 times that he has been fouled in La Liga this season, only one of them has been in the final third — 11 of them have been in Atlético’s own half. The trend is quite clear too, given the speed at which opposition players latch onto Félix’s pass receptions. In games against the stronger opponents such as Real Madrid and Real Sociedad, Félix had defenders latched on his back with a level of aggression that made it almost impossible to secure the ball. Sometimes it takes a yellow card, but often it takes only a word from the referee and a restart.
As Félix’s form has stagnated since the opening day, the questions as to what is happening with him will being to creep in again. From the sentiments suggesting this could be the “year of João Félix” after his hat-trick of assists versus Getafe — the year when, finally, it all comes together and he emerges as not just a talent but one of Europe’s prized assets — the 22-year-old has again fallen back into a state of suspension.
Games pass where he doesn’t touch the ball enough, where he gets fouled more times than anyone on the pitch, where he gets substituted after an hour, and where Atlético’s approach runs against his tendencies. For Félix as an individual, sometimes the worst thing that can happen is that his team scores early — or even just first.
In the situation surrounding Félix’s treatment, Atlético have to take an introspective approach to it — regardless of how strongly they want to send a message to the officials in formal terms. It isn’t just the referees failing to protect the Portuguese, nor is it opponents gunning to take chunks out of him. Félix’s current predicament exists in some part due to Atlético’s approach, which is too often leaving him on the edge of games and where he is prone to the stoppages that opponents can enforce. If he were seeing more of the ball or doing so from more advantageous starting positions, teams would have to alter the way in which they defend him.
Félix exists in a team where his way of playing is juxtaposed to almost everyone around him: he carries the ball differently, he pauses with it at his feet, he is hesitant to release it for fear of not getting a return pass and he craves association where it often doesn’t happen. It won’t be possible to fix all of those things for Atlético, but it has to be acknowledged that Félix is simply different to other players — and that is integral to his predicament.
If that means he isn’t compatible over the long term, then so be it. In the here and now though, Atlético cannot be bystanders to the fact that their most talented player is both touching the ball less than other ‘stars’ and being fouled more than any other player in Europe at the same time. Perhaps the club would argue that there are no ‘stars’ at the club — and that such a notion goes against Simeone’s ideals — to which one would have to ask why you would spend €126 million on a player who isn’t a prolific scorer in the first place.
The treatment that Félix is receiving from the opposition is not a force upon which Diego Simeone and the club have no control, and waiting for the officials to take a more radical view isn’t going to save the situation. Atlético need to look internally too, and once more, ask the question of why their ultimate investment is, again, at the mercy of a sea of obstacles.