Last night England crashed to a 1-0 defeat to Brazil – and Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola is likely to have enjoyed one player’s performance in particular if he tuned in.
Gareth Southgate’s side produced a poor performance at Wembley, against a Brazil outfit with an unfamiliar backline and a new manager in Dorival Junior.
England just couldn’t break down their opponents, and were reduced to mostly half-chances. In the end, Brazil got a winner through substitute Endrick.
Kyle Walker picked up an injury in the first-half, and John Stones and Phil Foden did not really have particularly influential games.
But if Pep Guardiola was watching last night, then he surely had to have been impressed with Lucas Paqueta, a player City have been heavily linked with in recent times…
Manchester City target Lucas Paqueta shines for Brazil against England
As poor as England were, credit must go to Brazil who actually made it very difficult for the Three Lions.
They had a great shape about them when out of possession, being nice and compact, England just couldn’t fashion any meaningful chances in the contest, but Brazil had a few decent opportunities.
One of Brazil’s best players on the night was West Ham United star Paqueta – a player City were in talks to buy for £80 million last summer (via Goal).
The 26-year-old was part of a midfield three along with Joao Gomes and Bruno Guimaraes, and he was at the heart of everything.
He was perhaps a bit lucky not to have been sent off for accumulative fouls, but his quality was abundantly clear. His shot that rattled the post in the first-half almost made for a lovely goal.
He also had one curling effort that whistled just past the top corner.
Paqueta combined creativity and combativeness and one just got the feeling watching him that Pep Guardiola would have been impressed. He was described as ‘quality’ by South American football expert Tim Vickery.
Pep had to have loved what he saw
Who knows if Pep tuned in last night, but if he did then he would surely have loved this performance from Paqueta, who feels like a Manchester City player-in-waiting.
Paqueta has that wonderful technical ability that any player needs if they are going to be in a Pep Guardiola team. But you also need to have good defensive discipline and work-rate. Paqueta has these things too.
It really is hard at this point to see Pep not instructing his recruitment team to make Paqueta a priority.
Paqueta would not really be drawn on the speculation about him and a potential move to City the other day when asked about it in a press conference. But hopefully the groundwork is already being laid, because he seems like he’d fit like a glove.
Encouragingly, Fabrizio Romano did suggest earlier this week that City were working on their interest.