Three goals against 10-man Bayern Munich and suddenly Sergio Agüero
is being hailed as the new Diego Maradona or being given a leg up to the
pedestal of contemporary legends occupied for so long by just Lionel
Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Is Manchester City’s striker really that good? As a striker, he quite possibly is, as his
hat-trick against Bayern
demonstrated. For while it was true that the Germans had nothing riding
on the result, and had gone down to 10 men before half-time, the
context of the game was everything. City were being outplayed. They
needed to win, or felt they needed to win, and Agüero was the player,
the only player, who made that possible.
He had three chances on the night, and took them all ruthlessly. The
first one might have been a penalty, but Agüero’s pace, strength and eye
for a chance had put him into a position to score, which was why Mehdi
Benatia was correctly shown a red card for bringing him down.
By the end, the whole ground was in no doubt that he would score when
the final chance came his way. The bigger the occasion, the more
crucial the result, the more the game seems to be slipping inexorably
away without some sort of superhuman intervention, the more likely it
appears that Agüero will step up to provide it.
“This year Sergio has been unbelievable,” his team-mate Samir Nasri
said. “He was the same last year but then he got his injury. This year
he is fitter. When he is one-on-one with the goalkeeper you don’t see
him miss the target.
“Ronaldo may be on another planet, but for me Sergio is up there with
Messi and [Luis] Suárez. He always delivers in a difficult moment. I
don’t think I need to speak about his performances because the stats
speak for themselves. He’s a great player. When he’s on his day he’s
unstoppable, and we needed him to be that against Bayern.”
The stats also indicate that Agüero might be City’s most valuable
player. Yaya Touré is generally considered the heartbeat of the team but
there appears to be a direct correlation between Agüero scoring and
City succeeding. Agüero has scored five of City’s seven Champions League
goals this season and 17, almost half, of their 38 in all competitions.
Furthermore, every time Agüero has scored in a game this season City
have either won (seven) or drawn (four). Of the seven games when Agüero
has played but failed to score, City have lost five, won one and drawn
the other.
Of the three strikers on duty at the Etihad this season Agüero has
played more games and more minutes than Edin Dzeko or Stevan Jovetic and
therefore scored more goals, though his total of 17 so far is more than
the other two put together.
Agüero has produced more shots on target (38) than either Dzeko
(eight) or Jovetic (nine), and on average he has scored a goal every
74.8 minutes, which compares very favourably with Dzeko’s 243.8 and
Jovetic’s 222.3. Just over 30% of Agüero’s shots end up in the back of
the net, whereas the other two can boast only 14.8% and 12.5%, although
you do not really need Opta statistics to tell you that the Argentinian
is lethal in front of goal.
Some of Agüero’s shots are speculative, he misses from time to time
like any other human, but if you need a goal to save your life and he
has only the goalkeeper to beat then there cannot be many surer bets in
world football.
It was Manuel Pellegrini who first suggested that his player had the
potential this season to establish himself alongside Messi and Ronaldo
at the pinnacle of world football, though the City manager appeared to
be backtracking slightly when he said after the Bayern game that Agüero
might simply be the best striker in the world. There is a subtle
difference.
Ronaldo and Messi are both players who can not only make goals, they
can alter the course of a game by doing things other than scoring.
Ronaldo can make lightning charges from the halfway line, for
example, occupying the larger part of a defence to leave room for
someone else to score. He can also test defences with shots on goal from
set pieces, often leading to a tap-in goal for a team-mate after a
half-save or a block on the line. In addition to his own reliable
finishing, Messi can contribute the mazy dribbles that take out
defenders, the unexpected pass into space or the route into the area
that did not occur to anyone else.
Agüero is not quite such a complete player, his forte is scoring
goals, but as a pure striker there are few better. His main competition
in England at the moment might be Diego Costa, in Europe Luis Suárez,
although the latter is really out on his own as an individual, both a
deadly finisher, clever schemer and brilliant improviser.
But neither Costa nor Suárez is as physically strong as Agüero, as
athletically muscular, as hard to knock off the ball. Unstoppable is
exactly the right word, for though it is no secret what Agüero will try
to do to defences, preventing him doing it can be near to impossible. He
definitely deserves to be rated in the company of Costa and Suárez, but
catching up with Messi and Ronaldo might take a little more time.
Not least because both of those players (and indeed the other two)
take Champions League football and vying for domestic honours for
granted. Manchester City are not quite at that stage yet. They are
improving, thanks in no small part to Agüero, but if it is true that the
biggest games bring out the very best in the biggest players, City will
not figure in as many of them unless the rest of the squad can find a
way to match their leading scorer’s standard.
That can be the only explanation for Agüero’s absence from the 40-man
shortlist Uefa has just announced for team of the year. There are
nowhere near 40 better players than Agüero in Europe, and there might
not be any deadlier strikers.
