In the Men’s International Football realm, the summer of 2024 has been the summer of Spain.
First, they emerged victorious from the European Championships, beating an England side that included Madrid-based Jude Bellingham in the final.
Then, impressionable kids went on to replicate a senior squad which included the youngest player in Euros history, Lamine Yamal, who would celebrate his 17th birthday four days early by also taking the title of youngest goalscorer in Euros history when he netted in the semi-final versus France — as Spain subsequently claimed the U19 European Championship title.
Now, as we enter August, they’ve capped off the summer in style, with Olympic Gold the latest addition to an RFEF trophy cabinet that just doesn’t want to cease its expansion at present.
One glory hunter took part in two of those three successes — 21-year-old Barcelona midfielder Fermín López, who played a minor role in the Euros before going on to make himself a far more significant presence at the Paris Olympics, as indispensable to the Spanish team as the iconic torch is to the Games themselves.
This tactical analysis and Fermín López scouting report will delve into the details of the young Barca midfielder’s game, highlighting why his off-the-ball strides into goalscoring positions, intelligent carries, and relentless pressing were collectively crucial aspects of his national team’s tactics.
These helped ensure the host nation would have to settle for silver as Spain further cemented its dominance on the international stage.
Who Is Fermín López?
Born in the province of Huelva, Fermín López (176cm/5’9”, 68kg/150lbs) is a product of Barca’s famed youth academy, La Masía, having moved to the Catalan talent factory in 2016, as an U14, from Real Betis.
The Andalusian midfielder made his senior debut for Barcelona last season and ended up accumulating 1381 minutes of La Liga football during the 2023/24 campaign.
A few things that immediately jump out with regard to his game are his 84th percentile rank in shots per 90, highlighting that he is a high-volume shooter, his pass accuracy in the 80th percentile, and his volume of defensive actions, with defensive duels per 90 and defensive positioning making up his two highest percentile ranks relative to other attacking midfielders from Europe’s top-five leagues in 2023/24.
Fermín López Heatmap
These two heatmaps bear a fairly striking resemblance in that both display López’s general preference for drifting off into the half-space — particularly the right half-space.
During the Olympics, in particular, he also managed to get plenty of involvement centrally, in ‘zone 14’ — the area just in and around the ‘D’ on the edge of the penalty area — and even in deeper positions.
Based on what we’ve seen from him in his career thus far, at the moment, he’s undoubtedly at his best in those more advanced areas just on the edge of the final third and from where he can drift into the penalty area to contribute goals.
Fermín López Shot Map
In his first LaLiga season for Barca, López netted eight non-penalty goals—not a bad tally at all for a top-flight debutant, and one that makes him one of the top-scoring midfielders in the Spanish top-flight for 2023/24.
He scored those eight goals from 46 shots, generating 6.54 xG and averaging 0.14 xG per shot.
We can see he typically has a solid ability to place his shots away from the centre of the net, while he averaged a strong shot accuracy rate of 52.17% last season.
Some of the above percentile ranks are not where, perhaps, López and his coaches would like them to be.
For instance, you wouldn’t complain about your attacking midfielder offering a bit more in terms of ‘dangerous passes’ or dribbles per 90.
While López’s dribble volume is relatively low, his success rate is high.
Still, he would do well to trust himself with taking on defenders a bit more to add an extra facet of consideration for defenders when attempting to cope with him, as the quality and potential are definitely there in his dribbling technique, which has delivered solid results.
Similarly, López could trust himself a bit more to split defences apart with his passing.
Still, there is a weakness in this part of his game in the sense that when he has taken on line-breaking passes, the weight and power are inaccurate more than he’d like, resulting in losses of possession.
Hence, this is a major area of improvement for the Barca midfielder.
In general, López is reliable in his link-up play.
He tends to connect with teammates and build attacks more via his movement into space and safer, less risky passes designed to connect players to one another in the attack but not be that final defence-splitting ball.
This is a fine trait to have, but it wouldn’t hurt López to try and develop those killer passes and work on his ability to beat players 1v1 with more regularity just to give himself more options with his game.
Fermín López Shooting Technique
López’s shooting technique has been relatively consistent from 2023/24 and throughout Spain’s 2024 Olympics campaign, in which he scored six goals, including two in the final, only ending up behind Morocco’s Soufiane Rahimi in the goalscoring charts.
When shooting, he tends to approach the ball from a fairly sharp angle, almost 90 degrees to the goal.
When he strikes, he rotates fiercely, which is a technique he’s clearly comfortable with and which allows him to get lots of power behind the strike.
López can perform this type of shot with power and great accuracy, making it a deadly weapon in his arsenal.
Another major plus to López’s attacking game is the fact that he’s extremely comfortable with his weaker left foot.
The image above shows an example of López pinging a shot into the bottom corner of the net from range via his left foot versus Japan in the Olympics quarter-final.
In this instance, the Barca midfielder uses the exact same shooting technique we described above, but on his left side, mirroring what we saw before.
Again, he’s capable of hitting it low, accurately and very hard.
His two-footedness makes him far more difficult for defenders to deal with.
It also gives his coaches more versatility with him, as he can come from the middle of the park, the left, and the right while posing a very similar threat all the time.
Fermín López Off-The-Ball Movement
The main thing López brings to his team is the valuable quality of adding goals from midfield.
His shooting technique helps with this greatly — particularly when it comes to launching shots from range.
However, the influence of the midfielder’s off-the-ball movement in his high shot numbers and, indeed, his high goalscoring numbers is even greater than that of his shooting technique.
López’s movement really helps him get into those high-value goalscoring positions in the box, from where the majority of his goals come.
Take a look back at figure 3 and note that seven of the eight goals he bagged in LaLiga last season all came from inside the box, within the width of the six-yard box — a valuable position to be shooting from, a fact López is fully aware of.
On this occasion, as his team progresses up the wing and into a dangerous playmaking position, López makes his move from just outside the ‘D’ of the box towards the penalty area, but he moves at a pace which keeps himself unmarked, just a tad slower than that of the defenders and attackers ahead of him.
The ball carrier on the left wing had lifted his head and seen López’s run in figure 6, and after he’d progressed further down the wing in figure 7, we can see that he ultimately went with that option López was providing via a slightly delayed run into the box from deep.
The wide ball carrier ended up pulling the ball back for López to meet just inside the box.
The 21-year-old meets the ball with his left foot and converts by shooting across his body, aiming for the far corner — a shot that hits its target.
López’s first goal — which was also Spain’s first goal — in the Olympic Final came in quite a similar fashion to the way in which his goal was scored versus Almería.
On this occasion, the ball arrived from deeper.
As Spain worked the ball into the centre, López found an opportunity to peel away off the shoulder of his marker in the middle of the park and begin moving towards the box, but there was still the issue of a French backline to conquer.
His teammates ended up parting the French centre-backs beautifully via some unselfish movement, particularly that of the right striker, who had to make a run very out of the way to drag France’s left centre-back with him, opening up space for López to target with his run from deep.
The Barca midfielder doesn’t hesitate to take advantage of this glorious opportunity and ends up in a position begging to be found by the now-central ball carrier — Alex Baena.
Baena picks López out and while the 21-year-old’s shot is actually quite weak, the position and proximity to goal it comes from essentially makes it effective enough to beat the ‘keeper and put a goal on the board for Spain.
This was an intelligent move characterised by excellent timing of the run and top-class teamwork.
Several players worked together in different ways to essentially split France apart and open the door for López.
This attacking midfielder’s off-the-ball movement has got to be his greatest asset, both from an attacking perspective and in terms of his game as a whole.
Fermín López Defensive Contributions
Lastly, we’re going to take a bit of time to focus on López’s defensive contributions.
As his percentile ranks all the way back in figure 1 show, the general trend with López’s out-of-possession game is high-volume, low-success.
He frequently exhibits high energy levels off the ball and is happy to throw himself into a defensive duel.
However, with that said, there are times when he can be a bit overzealous and either commit a foul as a result of rushing into a duel or even commit himself too much to a tackle, giving the ball carrier a chance to fake him out and progress past him.
López’s physicality can also be a bit of an issue in his defensive game, as he is not the biggest and strongest midfielder out there — an area he could develop further with time.
He’s not going to be muscling opponents off the ball and, crucially, he can be a bit easy to just shield from the ball.
With all of that said, López is capable of closing players down very quickly and offers a lot of energy and commitment without the ball.
These are valuable skills, especially in the modern game where pressing is so important, and we have an example of how this can be critical in figure 10.
Here, as Spain’s left and right forward close off the pass on either side for the goalkeeper — and the right striker, in particular, begins closing him down aggressively, the ‘keeper opts to try and persevere with the team’s plan to play out from the back by targeting the holding midfielder.
However, as the pass was played, he would’ve instantly regret making that choice and not just putting his foot through it due to the intensity of the Spanish press because López made up the little ground between him and that receiver very quickly, successfully intercepting the ball and carrying it forward into a goalscoring position.
This allows López to score for Spain and break the deadlock for his team against the Dominican Republic.
Conclusion
To conclude this tactical analysis and Fermín López scout report, López was vital to his country’s Olympic success and was probably the star of the Men’s Football tournament at the Paris Games.
He stood out through his ability to add goals from midfield thanks to his shooting technique and intelligent off-the-ball movement.
His defensive contributions are plenty, and the midfielder’s ability to press with high intensity is another key contributor to his impressive goalscoring numbers.
The two-footed Barca midfielder has a lot of desirable tools in his belt and, at 21, can still improve on the areas of improvement highlighted earlier.
Having only made his La Liga debut last season, he’s capped off a monumental year in his career with a European Championship winner’s medal and Olympic Gold—now López must show his mental quality by remaining hungry for more and continuing the pursuit of glory at club and international level.
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