As Oleksandr Zinchenko was in the process of joining Arsenal, Man City were in the market for a full-back. Brighton’s 23-year-old Marc Cucurella is one name that’s supposedly appeared on the top of the shortlist, with Pep Guardiola publicly admitting the club was in negotiations.
Spending more than a decade of his young career in Spain, La Masia graduate Cucurella also played at Getafe and Eibar in La Liga before joining Brighton last summer. With that said, he is yet to become a regular member of Luis Enrique’s Spanish national team — is he good enough for Man City?
This tactical analysis details Cucurella’s quality on and off the ball with the use of data from Wyscout and in-game analysis. At Brighton, he has tried different roles from left-back to left centre-back under Graham Potter but, more or less, he would be offering similar elements to the team.
Passing and delivery
As everyone knows, City are a dominant side that tend to control possession. Their players must be good on the ball. Furthermore, a top coach like Guardiola always pays great attention to detail, demanding a lot from each player, in each action. We believe Cucurella ticks these boxes.
From the stats, Cucurella is in a decent position in terms of ball progression compared to all other full-backs in the league. He’s on the top-right quadrant, suggesting his ability to progress the ball by a pass or carry are both better than the mean. He made 9.08 progressive passes per 90 and 1.83 progressive runs per 90, showing he’s very comfortable on the ball.
As a former Barcelona youth player, he’s good and comfortable on the ball, which suits the tactics of Brighton and City. He can play under pressure and make good decisions as we will explain in this example.
Firstly, when Solly March passed the ball back to Cucurella, we saw N’Golo Kanté pressing and Cucurella’s body angle directed towards three options ahead, including a potential one-two pass with March if his teammate made the move. Although the angle to Yves Bissouma was blocked by Kanté, Cucurella was still able to spot Alexis Mac Allister behind the press.
Even though Kanté was pushing and seemingly viable options were presented, Cucurella did not panic under pressure. Instead, he judged the pressure coming was not at full speed, meaning there was time to take a touch. Therefore, the rushed pass forward to the same side (Mac Allister) did not happen, but Cucurella took a good touch and perfectly opened his body to the other part of the pitch.
Then, Cucurella had another series of options to consider, such as finding the keeper in depth to circulate or potentially Dan Burn if the Chelsea striker jumped early. Also, we could see Adam Lallana was dropping to ask for the ball, along with the other two options on the other side if he took more touches.
But Cucurella is a player with a forward-thinking mindset. When there is an opportunity to break lines, he will definitely give it a go. He did not take these options because there was an optimal solution — Enock Mwepu in the central circle. He saw Lallana’s move as a decoy to take the Chelsea midfielder so the space behind the press was opened.
Another reason why Guardiola would love Cucurella is his good passing, not only the direction and the mindset but also the details in execution. This pass to Mwepu was going to space, not to the receiver’s feet. The benefit was shown in the next action, as this allowed Mwepu to turn and face the goal while taking the ball. Then, Brighton could have a fast chance to break as Neal Maupay was ready to run behind.
On the contrary, if Cucurella’s pass had casually arrived at Mwepu’s feet, the midfielder would have had to wait for the ball and then try to turn, because the body angle would be different if the pass had gone as described in that hypothetical scenario. This would undoubtedly slow them down and that’s why the pass he did play was so good.
In the last third, Cucurella also offers a wide threat and can provide good deliveries from the wings. Away from home at Stamford Bridge, Cucurella simply picked Danny Welbeck in the crowd with a pinpoint cross, which turned into a late equalizer that helped Brighton to grab a point.
Cucurella has good sense with the ball; that sort of cross is not the only skill in his toolbox. Weeks later when Brighton played Chelsea again at home, another Cucurella delivery indirectly resulted in the equalizer.
Initially, Brighton were attacking from the side as Cucurella received out wide, he was using the right foot to pass — another key element to his game. Cucurella is competent with both feet so his opponent finds it more difficult to block his angle.
After the pass, as his teammate received down the flank, Cucurella did not stop but moved inward to search for an angle to support again. Additionally, he had a very good running capacity and the mindset to combine via pass and move. Now, he received again and used the right foot for the first contact, which helped him open the body even better before driving down the flank (due to the pressing player’s direction).
Then, we could see Welbeck making a similar move to the goal he scored in the previous example, but the Chelsea last line was also alert as both Thiago Silva and Antonio Rüdiger dropped back to the six-yard line. It would be okay if Cucurella pinpointed the pass to Welbeck as he did, but it would be more difficult to get an attempt on goal.
However, Cucurella was so calm and composed that he kept his head up to observe who was available in the process, which helped him to make good decisions based on how the opposition reacted. This time, he saw Mac Allister was totally at the edge of the box, so Cucurella just passed the ball out instead of crossing it in the same way, leading to a Brighton shot, with a corner and the goal at the end.
Good defending
When it comes to a higher level, every aspect of the player shall be considered, so Cucurella’s quality without the ball is also very important to measure, as we will explain in this section.
As the first scatter plot of the section shows, Cucurella is good at defensive duels in terms of both frequency of the event and the winning percentage. He had 7.81 defensive duels per 90, which suggests he’s a proactive defender who is familiar with trying to dispossess the opponent in 1v1 confrontations. Meanwhile, the success rate is quite impressive at 64.26% as well.
In the air, Cucurella is also serviceable. Although 1.99 aerial duels were below the average, when Cucurella was competing in the air, he was decent — achieving a 54.05% success rate.
Apart from the stats, we can also demonstrate Cucurella’s defensive ability in game situations. Firstly, he has great pace and physicality, as well as the capacity to cover huge ground to defend. The first example vs Tottenham was a transitional event. When Cucurella pushed high to offer the width, his team lost the ball in the centre.
Soon, Cucurella was aware of the counter-press not being successful as Rodrigo Bentancur got the ball. He was very quick to recover, although not very clear about the direction of play as the pass had not been made yet.
Just seconds later, he identified Bentancur’s long pass to Harry Kane over the top, and he was already in a position to defend as he sprinted from the offensive third back to the central circle. Then, his general good judgment in aerial duels allowed him to take the ball away from the receiver before it arrived.
The Tottenham example outlined Cucurella’s ability to defend in a high line but, mostly, from a physical perspective. When he was at his very best, though, the former Getafe player was also an intelligent defender who judged the situation well.
The other example was taken from the Chelsea game, as Romelu Lukaku won the aerial duel on the other side and eliminated two Brighton players. In the meantime, Cucurella was in the centre circle alongside Mason Mount, who saw the result of the duel and dashed forward to retrieve the second ball.
Of course, in these situations, it’s the defender’s responsibility to cover and not let the opponent play easily. As explained, Cucurella was never afraid of these open situations given his physicality and pace were perfect gifts in high-line defending.
But it would be tricky! Another Chelsea attacker, Callum Hudson-Odoi, joined his teammate but Joël Veltman was on the ground and unable to chase him. In this scenario, mediocre defenders would get drawn at the ball to compete with Mount but Cucurella, instead, was very calm and alert to keep his head up. Therefore, he saw Hudson-Odoi’s run and considered this when making his decision.
Instead of following Mount’s run tightly, Cucurella intelligently slowed down a bit to keep himself in a more central position. Yes, this would allow Mount to take the ball, but a hidden message of this action was to control the space in the centre.
If Mount were clever and found Hudson-Odoi because Cucurella rushed in front of him, Brighton would concede a 1v1 chance in the centre. Now, Cucurella’s position was exactly in the centre, the direction of the move was more vertically backward than jumping out diagonally to engage Mount.
And yes, he distanced himself from the ball and gave Mount the time to play, but the angle available was only towards the blue zone on the outside. In most cases, the opponent would not score from there and it was safer to let the ball go away from the goal.
This was a piece of very high-quality defending. Knowing when to delay and when to push would be very valuable to a team that requires players to defend huge areas at times, like City.
As Mount shifted the ball to his stronger foot, Cucurella already angled himself to intercept the inside pass. Although Mount still managed to slip it through, it took an outer path, closer to Bissouma, who could come back and clear the danger.
If Mount did not pass this ball inside, he could only continue to drive towards the byline as Cucurella’s body position only left that space open, but the angle was not favourable for a shot.
When the outcome of the defending was a great success, it was easy to forget Cucurella’s good work from the beginning, but in fact, many reckless defenders would have overcommitted on Mount and set Hudson-Odoi completely free.
Conclusion
In this scout report, we investigated many of Cucurella’s strengths. Of course, as a young player at the age of 23, there are also many things to improve, such as achieving consistency week to week. If he moved to the Premier League champions, the coaching staff at City could certainly help him to get even better but, at present, he definitely has the raw quality to play with the likes of Rúben Dias and Aymeric Laporte.
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