West Ham United star Lucas Paqueta has been absolutely brilliant and infuriating in equal measures this season, but we can’t say that we weren’t warned.
Lucas Paqueta joined West Ham from Lyon in the summer of 2022 for a club record £51 million fee (The Times).
READ ALSO: Opinion: Lucas Paqueta doesn’t want to play for West Ham anymore but you can’t blame him
The 26-year-old has thrilled the Hammers fans at times this season, but has left David Moyes pulling his hair out as well – something that the Scot has openly admitted.
Sky Sports pundit Tim Sherwood recently praised Paqueta but slaughtered him as well at the same time, and that seems to be a common theme.
We were all warned about the Brazilian ace last year by a man who knows all there is to know about South American football…Tim Vickery.
West Ham were warned about Lucas Paqueta more than a year ago by the best source there is
If a club from Europe ever sign a South American – especially a Brazilian – Tim Vickery is the go-to man for all outlets across the globe, as they hunt for an insight into the player.
Vickery, an English freelance football journalist who has lived in Brazil since 1994, is the South American football correspondent for outlets such as BBC Sport, ESPN, talkSPORT and Sky Sports.
And when West Ham signed Paqueta last summer, Vickery was invited on to Sky Sports News (Thursday August 25th, 1.12pm, 2022) to give us the lowdown on the Brazil international:
“He really is an attacking midfielder, you can play him right up front, can play him as a kind of withdrawn winger and you could also play him deeper in midfield. Although there is a problem there that sometimes he can give the ball away too close to goal because he’s showboating. This is the one potential problem with him and is the reason, I think, that he’s available to a club like West Ham – and is at Lyon at the moment – after not quite hitting the expectations at Milan. He is a little bit petulant, there’s a little bit of the petulant schoolboy about him. You’d hope that somebody who grew up on an island without cars would have a calmer disposition to life than Paqueta has! So it would be a challenge of man management for David Moyes but the quality, the class that he could bring are very, very exciting indeed.”
Blimey – could Vickery have nailed his assessment of Lucas Paqueta any more than he did back in August 2022?
The showboating too close to goal part – wow, just wow. We have seen it from the Brazilian every single week, most recently against Aston Villa and Everton in our last two Premier League games.
How about his petulancy!! That has been on display in pretty much every game this season and culminated with him receiving a pointless yellow card on Sunday after complaining to the referee – he’s now suspended for our clash with Brentford next week.
In spite of all of that, Lucas Paqueta is still an absolute magician, and he has showcased his unbelievable quality many times in a West Ham shirt.
I just wish that he would cut the showboating too close to his goal out of his game. It has proven to be really costly for us in recent weeks.
Maybe that is the reason why he’s playing for us and not an elite club though. I can guarantee you something, if Pep Guardiola signs Paqueta for Manchester City, the 26-year-old will not play a single minute for them if he continues to be so careless in possession inside his own defensive third.
If Lucas Paqueta is to go on and become a real superstar, he has to ensure that he doesn’t neglect his defensive duties. That’s just the way the game is now.
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