SeasonGoalsXG 2017-181314.0 2018-1979.7 2019-201418.5 2020-2198.8 2021-22810.1 2022-23 (so far)55.9 Overall5667.0
Gabriel Jesus has underperformed his XG throughout his career. Despite all the qualities of him, the completion is not the most outstanding, even if he is not especially terrible at it. But why is this the case? Follow me into the realms of pop psychology.
Not a natural striker Contrary to popular belief, Jesus became a center forward late in his career. When he started playing band more often after the 2018 World Cup (more on that later), it wasn’t a repositioning, it was a return to his natural habitat. He broke into the Palmeiras team when he was a teenager as a wide forward; his childhood idol was Robinho.
It was only during the 2016 season, when Palmeiras had an injury crisis at centre-forward, that Jesus’ then-manager Cuca decided he had the qualities to play in the middle. He worked right away, he scored four goals in three starts in the Copa Libertadores group stage and scored 12 goals as Palmeiras won the Brazilian title.
His national team was mired in a decade-long search for a centre-forward, with the Seleção testing players like Robinho and Diego Tardelli as false 9s, with good but not great options like Fred and Jô winning more games than you’d expect for a national. team of that size.
Taking over as Head Coach of Brazil in August 2016, Tite decided to take a gamble on Jesus, not only choosing him for the team, but throwing him straight into the starting lineup. It was as much about the scarcity of other options as it was about the belief in the talent of Jesus (although Gabriel Barbosa was a formidable partner).
The teenager scored twice in an absolutely crucial World Cup qualifier in Ecuador on his debut in September 2016, building on his hot run at club level. Everything was coming up Jesus. But it is important to remember that being a striker is not the basis of him, he is not a natural finisher, even if he is a constant goal threat, both in the number of opportunities he has and the number of opportunities he creates for others.
He puts a lot of pressure on himself. One of the reasons I think he underperformed his XG at Manchester City was psychological. Jesus is a sensitive character, he looks below at his response to being sent off in the 2019 Copa América Final. He was given an additional penalty for pushing the VAR station as he was leaving the field that night. After being so heavily criticized for not scoring in the 2018 World Cup, he was absolutely desperate to prove a point in the subsequent tournament. He scored in the match and Brazil won, but he was still nervous as a spring.
Gabriel Jesús already has the face of a crybaby and that he really cries is funny pic.twitter.com/jb53oU6JLC
— melo (@amandmeloo) July 7, 2019
At City, he often spoke about the dilemma of playing second fiddle to a club legend like Sergio Aguero. On the rare occasions that he was able to start up front, he knew he needed to pull rabbits out of hats to be considered for the next game. My assessment is that it led to a tension in his auction.
He was heavily criticized in Brazil for not scoring in the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The criticism was harsh and lacking in context, but those are the breaks when you play for a nation of 210 million people, for whom winning the World Cup is a big part. of national identity. Many who watch Brazil at the World Cup are not year-round football fans and many are and simply don’t care about the tactical nuances or team mechanics that could drive this result.
If you have the 9 on your back and you don’t score a goal, you’ve failed and you can go to hell. It really is that simple. The criticism hurt Jesus enough to ask that he be reconsidered a wide player both at club and international level. Sometimes, he is a player who carries the weight of expectations, both his own and those of others.
Jesus’ relative recent “goal drought” had gone relatively unnoticed until this weekend, when he missed presentable chances in a 1-1 draw at Southampton. He brings so much more to the table that failing to score in five games doesn’t have the same cache as when someone like Aubameyang, for example, suffers a similar streak.
In addition, Arsenal did not win at Southampton, so the mistakes had more weight. Again, this is folk psychology, but I think this was the first time I detected that tension in his shot, the first time that maybe the ‘drought’ was a little bit on his mind as he approached the goal. . The interesting thing about his Premier League numbers at Manchester City is how opposite they are to his Champions League numbers.
SeasonGoalsExpected Goals 2018-1943.6 2019-2044.7 2020-2161.3 2021-2221.6 Overall2011.2
Again, my assessment of folk psychology is that Jesus scored most of these goals in the group stage where he often started ahead of Sergio Aguero in the first place as a matter of course. Secondly, group stage football is terrible precisely because it lacks danger and tension. These were relatively low-key games in which City were heavy favorites to win. However, he also scored some important goals in the knockout round: in those games, he was largely deployed as an open striker and he was not expected to be the main goalscoring threat.
It expends a lot of energy. As we have seen at length, Jesus has a level of omnipotence worthy of his name. He runs a lot, he’s not a big guy, and yet he enjoys physical duels with bigger, burlier middle halves and often wins them. After his departure from Manchester City, Pepe Guardiola was lyrical about his effort.
“Even if you play with him for five minutes; he gives you the best five minutes of his entire life.” All that effort, possibly, has a cost in front of goal. Players with less involvement on the pitch, or bigger players for whom a physical duel doesn’t require every ounce of their being, are probably more capable of showing composure in front of goal.
When Odegaard put Jesus in goal at St. Mary’s, you could almost see the oxygen coming out of Jesus’ lungs as he ran toward goal. He has a right to look tired right now, but it’s not just the number of minutes on Jesus’ lap that contributes to the lactic acid, it’s the amount of effort that’s injected into each performance. He would make sense if all that heat and light had a compensation when it comes time to take a deep breath.
Overall, there was enough data over a long enough period on Gabriel Jesus for Arsenal fans to know that the Gabriel Jesus cake has a touch of sloppiness, but that there are plenty of other ingredients to salivate over. Arsenal’s position in the football food chain is such that they buy elite players with a wrinkle or two and this one, for now, belongs to Gabriel Jesus.
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