PSV started the Eredivisie convincingly on Saturday by winning 0-2 on a visit to Heracles Almelo. According to Kenneth Perez ‘you can’t criticize’ after such a victory, but the analyst of ESPN does that anyway. Perez thought Ibrahim Sangaré was extremely sloppy in possession, after the PSV midfielder also received a lot of criticism on that aspect of his game last year.
“It has become 0-2, everything is going crescendo, so you can’t criticize, but Sangaré is a point of attention,” says Perez. “Sangare had an incredible loss of ball again. Everyone was talking about it: ‘Sangaré has started the season well. He now only has to do things he can do well’, but today he lost 23 or 24 times, a kind of equalization of his highest number last season. And then he really lost the ball.”
Sangaré, according to the figures of opta twenty times loss of ball against Heracles Almelo, slightly less than the number that Perez mentions. Only Philipp Mwene had more loss of possession at PSV (21 times). In defense of Sangaré, it must be said that the Ivorian was also the PSV player who by far touched the ball the most (109 ball contacts). With a pass accuracy of 82 percent, Sangaré did not stand out statistically.
Mario Been, who is also present as an analyst at ESPN, thinks that Sangaré can be blamed for ‘a piece of self-knowledge’. “What he is good at is stealing balls,” Been knows. “Then you either play next to Marco van Ginkel or Davy Pröpper… if you have the ball, you quickly give it to one of them. At least to someone who can play football.”
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