Madrid, 5 September (EFE) His coach, Italian Carlo Ancelotti, was right both to change the system to improve its performance and to claim in an interview that the midfielder played the part of the former Real Madrid captain.
“Bellingham’s arrival covers up Benzema’s absence,” he told Radio TV Serie A, when asked about the white team’s possible interest in signing Napoli’s Nigerian Victor Osimhen or any other striker.
A statement that, after four games of the season, is backed up by data exceeding even the five goals scored by the Englishman.
And the fact is that Bellingham is enjoying his best scoring start since he was a professional footballer and has had his fifth season despite being only 20 years old.
In his first four days at Birmingham – he started on the fifth – he scored two goals; in the next year, 2020-2021, debuting at Borussia Dortmund, he did not see the door; in 2021-2022 he only scored a goal, and in 2022-2023 he did not score.
In fact, he is experiencing his best moment on the scoring level, scoring six official matches in a row (two with Dortmund and four with Madrid). In those 6 games he scored 8 goals. The most he tied before was two games in a row in which a goal was scored.
A growth target that will see him surpass his career-best scoring record of 14 goals, which he followed up with seven assists, last season. Of course, Ancelotti wanted to calm the euphoria after Bellingham’s 95th-minute goal against Getafe by assuring that he could see he had scored “only” 15 goals. Quite an affordable figure, as the data show.
ADVANCED STATISTICS
Another strength of Bellingham early in the season is his goal scoring; where he performs, according to BeSoccer Pro, as the best striker in Europe in terms of efficiency ratio, measured between shots and goals converted, taking into account players who have played 180 minutes and at least two goals.
Bellingham has converted 50% (5 of 10) of his shots at the start of the season. Behind the French Kylian Mbappe with 5 goals on 14 shots (35.71%); Argentinean Lautaro Martinez with 5 goals out of 15 (33%); Norwegian Erling Haaland with 6 goals out of 18 (33.33%); Englishman Harry Kane – 3 goals out of 13 (23.08%); and Nigerian Victor Osimhen with 3 goals on 16 shots (18.75%).
And if we take into account the shots on goal, then only Kane with 4 goals in 5 shots and Osimhen with 3 goals in 4 shots are inferior to him; both with a 75% success rate, while Bellingham has a 71.43% success rate on 5 goals on 7 throws between three clubs.
On expected goals (a metric that measures the chance of a shot ending in a goal and doesn’t count penalties), Bellingham stands out even more. The Englishman should have 2.46 goals given the type of match he has starred in, but he has 5; which means that the quality of shooting is maximum.
The second player in this table LaLiga EA Sports is the Japanese Take Kubo, who has an expected score of 0.61 and scored 3.
At the other end of the table, compiled by BeSoccer Pro, is last season’s top scorer, Pole Robert Lewandowski. Barcelona’s nine have a combined expected goal of 4.17 and have only scored one goal.
Some data supporting Ancelotti’s correctness in his desire to use a 4-4-2 formation with a diamond in midfield to recover the 10 position with the Bellingham piece, in addition to his idea that the Englishman could take the free position left by Benzema.
Oscar Maya Belchi