In his rookie season in the NBA, when Shaquille O’Neal was asked if he was ‘the next Michael Jordan’, legend has it the confident young man replied, “No… I’m the first Shaq.”
Whenever sporting prodigies emerge, whatever the game, as spectators we often feel a need to draw comparisons with former players to contextualise what we’re seeing and to add a layer of hype around the talented youngster. It’s the reason we’ve seen approximately 267 ‘next Lionel Messi’s to date and the same reason every time Tottenham discover a midfielder who can beat a press we start wondering if they’ve finally replaced Moussa Dembele.
Since breaking into the Spurs first team this season at the age of just 20, Senegalese starlet Pape Matar Sarr has picked up several admirers from within the Spurs fanbase and beyond. After another standout performance in a 2-1 victory at Crystal Palace at the weekend, Sarr has become the youngest Tottenham player to appear in all ten opening league fixtures since Dele Alli in 2016/17.
The mere fact that these ten appearances have created a conversation around whether he should keep his spot in the team over the imminently returning Rodrigo Bentancur – a man who, alongside Harry Kane, was consistently Spurs’ standout performer last season – is a huge accolade in itself.
After making just 22 appearances for Metz and only sporadic outings last season for Spurs, this year is the first time a lot of fans are getting a proper look at Sarr, prompting the inevitable discourse around what type of player he is. Is he a Yaya Touré type? Is he more of a Patrick Vieira? Is he more like a young Steven Gerrard?
Fans of Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool respectively will understandably be quick to laugh off such lofty comparisons – these are of course all-time Premier League greats – but when these parallels are drawn it’s usually not so much to put a player anywhere near that pedestal, but more to suggest an archetype for the sort of player he could grow into.
Here we will look over the early evidence left by the young African’s fledgling career to try and paint a clearer picture. What does he do well? What is he capable of? How good could he become?
Perhaps comparisons to fellow African, Yaya Touré, or to Senegal-born Patrick Vieira are a little on the nose but when you watch Sarr this season it’s easy to see why some have drawn such parallels.
The 21 year-old glides around the field so effortlessly with or without the ball, devouring space and contributing all over the pitch, evoking the faintest echo of Vieira in his Arsenal pomp. To many, Sarr’s best attribute is his completeness as a midfielder which is partly why it’s difficult to define him as player, but also why he draws comparisons with the box-to-box monsters of yesteryear.
“He can do everything because he's a great player with many possibilities,” remarked Spurs assistant manager, Cristian Stellini last year, adding that: “He's a midfielder who can play in many positions. He's a talented player.”
Speaking in 2021, Sarr’s academy manager at Metz, Olivier Perrin compared him to deep-lying playmaker, Miralem Pjanić, but went on to add that “He can play in a system with two 10s, he can be central or box-to-box. He can be a 10, a 6… it depends on the coach.”
It’s important to keep in mind that all footballers develop at varying rates, both in terms of their style and their performance level. Midfielders, in particular, tend to come into their prime years in their mid-twenties with many at the top level receiving only very limited minutes at Sarr’s current age of 21. There are always exceptions of course; Cesc Fabregas and, more recently, Jude Bellingham, were running games as teenagers while Steven Gerrard had established himself as one of Liverpool’s main men by Sarr’s age.
By contrast, Yaya Touré was still playing for Beveren in Belgium at age 20 and was about to sign for Metalurh Donetsk in Ukraine. Even at Barcelona, Guardiola often played him at centre back and it wasn’t until joining Man City at the age of 27 that he really blossomed into the all-action beast he is best remembered as today.
Ngolo Kanté, similarly, was still playing in the French second tier until joining Leicester City at the age of 24 and players like Luka Modrić and Andrea Pirlo, though a different breed of central midfielder, both needed time to stand out among the elites.
Midfielders of the '90s and early 2000s often found themselves playing in two-man midfields as the 4-4-2 reigned supreme, and while Sarr did get a taste of that under Antonio Conte last season – most notably partnering fellow youngster Oliver Skipp in an exceptional midfield display against AC Milan in the Champions League – he has settled into a midfield three this season under the stewardship of Ange Postecoglou.
Despite having the basic tools to play as an effective ‘number 6’, Sarr has been employed so far in a progressive ‘number 8’ role to the right hand side of Spurs’ midfield, dovetailing with the inverted Pedro Porro at right-back and taking a lot of responsibility in Spurs’ build up play.
Of the midfield trio, Sarr’s role sits somewhere in between those of James Maddison and Yves Bissouma – both positionally and functionally. He bridges the gap between winning the ball and winning the match, playing his part in everything in between. With Bissouma as the primary defensive force in a midfield that sees a lot of the ball, it’s understandable that Sarr’s numbers for defensive actions don’t overtly stand out – though they are still strong. His figures for actions with the ball however show a really impressive range of contribution in possession and just how well-rounded the young man is.
A glance at his FBRef data below (source: FBRef.com) greets you with a delightful sea of bold green bars. When compared to other midfielders in the Premier League this season across what is now a significant sample size, you can see that Sarr scores in the upper ranges for just about everything. He passes the ball well and often, he moves possession forward, he gets himself into dangerous areas and he takes more than his fair share of shots on goal.
Watching him having slotted seamlessly into the Spurs midfield this season it’s been clear to see he boasts a whole array of impressive attributes – his speed, his physicality, his passing over shorter and longer distances, his ability to make the right pass, knowing when to lay the ball off and when to drive into the space with it and his positional awareness both on and off the ball.
Sarr is rarely spectacular – at least not so far. He has that rare ability to go about his business so effectively and so consistently that, at times, he can be among the best players on the pitch without you particularly noticing him. Vicente del Bosque once famously said of Sergio Busquets, “You watch the game, you don't see Busquets. You watch Busquets, you see the whole game.”
While we are veering right back into unfair comparison territory here, and while Sarr is a different type of midfielder, this type of analysis applies in some part to him this season as well. He does have that match winning moment in him – his cleverly-disguised through-ball for James Maddison at Bournemouth, his goal-saving defensive header, seemingly from nowhere, against Fulham, his perfectly timed run and finish to give Spurs the lead against Man Utd or his first-time 40-yard switch to Brennan Johnson that led to the second against Palace.
More often than not, though, it will be the likes of Son and Maddison who dominate the headlines and make the Match of the Day highlights, just because direct goal contributions will nearly always prevail in football, but Sarr’s contribution so early on in his Spurs career should not be undervalued.
As for what type of player he could go on to be, he has all the raw materials to be moulded into just about anything – a manager’s dream, you might say. For Metz he split his appearances between defensive, central and attacking midfield. For Senegal he has played in a midfield two, a midfield three, even on the wing in a 4-4-2. It remains to be seen quite how reliable he would be regularly playing Bissouma’s pivot role, taking the ball on the turn and finding space against a high press to find his man – a skill that is as much down to technique as it is tactical awareness – but with his balance and touch you expect he could learn to perform that function well.
He will need to add goals to his game if comparisons with Touré or Gerrard are ever to be taken seriously, but his willingness to shoot and his non-penalty expected goals percentile of 86th suggest goals could be in his future.
To continue the theme of unlikely comparisons, Sarr recently revealed in an interview with The Athletic’s Charlie Eccleshare that his nickname back in Senegal was and remains ‘Carlos’ after the legendary Brazilian left back Roberto Carlos – a nickname earned due to his propensity as a youngster to score spectacular long range goals. Perhaps if this aspect of his play graduates to the senior game too we might start to see a real gamechanger emerging.
Sarr’s performance against Palace made a very convincing argument for his continued selection in the Spurs lineup for upcoming games – after all, as the old adage goes, ‘never change a winning team’. Despite this, he will surely have a fight on his hands once Rodrigo Bentancur is back to full fitness – a mouthwatering prospect for Spurs fans, so long as the Uruguayan picks up even close to where he left off last season.
It’s hard to directly compare the two in terms of their metrics, as they have largely played in entirely different systems, but it’s fair to say they share a lot of the same strengths and one imagines Bentancur’s most natural home in the system affectionally known as ‘Angeball’, would be Sarr’s advanced 8 role - pressing high, driving forward with the ball and wriggling out of a tight midfield to progress play all while getting stuck in at every opportunity.
It’s a nice problem to have, as they say, and with so much having been made of Spurs’ issues with squad depth, it must be comforting for Postecoglou to know he has options. With Bentancur’s full return looming but requiring careful management, Bissouma’s propensity for collecting yellow cards like Panini stickers and the uncertainty surrounding Højbjerg’s future at the club, it’s feasible that Spurs’ midfield could take on various forms between now and the end of the season, so perhaps we will see Sarr having to show off more of his repertoire.
It’s hard to imagine though that Sarr will be confined to the role of backup for too long, having started the season so impressively. Ange has often spoken at length of his firm belief in backing youngsters and there is a sense he is the ideal coach to get the best out of a young talent like Sarr. Speaking in September about his talented young team, the Spurs boss had this to say (as reported by Alasdair Gold of Football.London).
"You've got to make sure young players are going to be able to handle what comes playing at this level. You certainly don't want to expose them too early because it can have a detrimental effect…
I try to give them as much security as I possibly can, for them to know that there's nothing that's going to happen out there that's going to be terminal in terms of their careers. 'Don't stress about the mistakes, don't stress about not playing well. I'll back you - as long as I'm seeing that you're improving and working hard and doing all the things I need you to do.'
Because part of that stress as a young player is feeling like you need to play really well to keep your place in the team and fearing that if you make a mistake in front of the whole world that's going to cost you something.”
However large a part Sarr plays for the rest of this season, it’s easy to get excited by his potential and by the speed at which he has adapted to the Colosseum that is the Premier League.
Perhaps the most exciting element of it all, with him being in this embryonic phase of his career, is that he could feasibly develop into almost any type of modern midfielder in the future and you feel he will do it very well. With the perfect blend of raw talent, the right attitude, the right team and the right coach, perhaps in a decade’s time when an exciting midfield prospect is breaking through, someone will stop and ask ‘could this kid be the next Pape Matar Sarr?’. Time will tell.
