One of the biggest things of football still being in the dark ages, is how people lazily look at physicality.
They look at physicality through height, size, power.
If you asked someone. Who’s more physical. Gyokeres or James Maddison?
They’ll laugh and say “obviously Gyokeres”.
No. Gyokeres has SOME physical attributes better than Maddison, Maddison has plenty physical attributes better than Gyokeres.
I’d also go as far to say Gyokeres has probably been shrugged off the ball more times in the opening months than Maddison has in an entire season.
Why? Becuase Maddison has phenomenal balance, agility, deceleration. You can’t get to him to actually shrug him off, by the time you’re decelerating and distributing your weight, he’s already turned on a sixpence and is away. Whereas the far bigger Gyokeres takes a while to ground himself and decelerate so in those moments he approaches the ball, he’s easier to push off it.
Whereas if you’ve got both players, at full speed and power, and it’s side by side, shoulder to shoulder, Gyokeres obviously completely dominates James Maddison.
Point being, we have to stop equating physicality in football to “size, strength, power, speed” when there are so many facets to it. And it’s even scarier when people who work in the game do it by looking at a players height or physique…