Player Review

91 - TOTS Obj

3.0

Only OK

By landsleaving, 03-05-2021

I was excited to replace Moments Busquets with what would hopefully be at least a marginal improvement over a player who impressed me, but never blew me away over Gold Kante.

Sadly, Rodri was a major step down from Busquets in some key aspects of his game. He feels sluggish on the ball, and moves slowly off it. He also never seems to find good positions for interceptions, always drifting out of position and going too far forward or wide. If you just want a player to protect your back line, he is not it. He rushes forward even with the stay back instruction, and is just not a good enough passer or finisher to make him doing that worth it.

He fails to make the kind of clutch interceptions Kante or Busquets would, missing balls that zip by him and when he does connect, it tends to rebound away. When he does get on the ball, he lacks the passing vision of Busquets, and moves really slowly. His pace stat felt very much like a lie. Shadow chem style did little to help.

Maybe he'd perform better as one of two CDMs, but on his own he was shown up by attackers quite often during weekend league. He turns like a truck and doesn't chase well, so he really needs to be a strong presence before the ball goes by, and he just is not. His size hinders him more than helps him. If I could compare him to any specific player, it would be Gold Casemiro - who actually does the same role far better, and feels about equal in terms of pace.

Where he does his best work is in pushing players off the ball. Others might just bounce off an Mbappe or Neymar, but Rodri will knock them out of his path. He's great for just barreling into an opposing runner and does both standing and sliding tackles well, hence my thinking he would be better if paired with a more interception-minded CDM in a 4-2-3-1 or similar.

Tall

Great stamina

Ok at defending when he's in position

Physical

Positioning

Movement

Passing

Formation: 41212

Position: CDM

Games: 10

GPG: 0.00

APG: 0.00

3.0

Overall

2.0

Value

1.0

4.0

Stamina

Pace (5/10)

Shooting (4/10)

Passing (6/10)

Dribbling (4/10)

Defending (7/10)

Physicality (9/10)

See All reviews...

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