WHO Poll
Q: 2023/24 Hopes & aspirations for this season
a. As Champions of Europe there's no reason we shouldn't be pushing for a top 7 spot & a run in the Cups
24%
  
b. Last season was a trophy winning one and there's only one way to go after that, I expect a dull mid table bore fest of a season
17%
  
c. Buy some f***ing players or we're in a battle to stay up & that's as good as it gets
18%
  
d. Moyes out
38%
  
e. New season you say, woohoo time to get the new kit and wear it it to the pub for all the big games, the wags down there call me Mr West Ham
3%
  



Alan 1:32 Thu Aug 25
Lucas Paqueta SIGNED
Lucas Paqueta: Lost in Milan, reborn at Lyon – and now West Ham’s statement signing

By James Horncastle

From the mountains overlooking Rio de Janeiro you can, on a clear day, see a small island across the Guanabara Bay.

It was here, in 1997, that the man set to become West Ham’s club-record signing, Lucas Tolentino Coelho da Lima, was born, a player better known by the name of his birthplace, the once-glamorous Ilha de Paqueta.

The journey he embarked on to become a professional footballer began with his grandfather Mirao ushering him and his older brother onto a ferry to cross the water between their home and Rio de Janeiro, where Lucas Paqueta attended Flamengo’s Gavea academy and Matheus trained at Ninho, another of the club’s facilities.

Paqueta has a tattoo on his forearm of a star and the letter “M” in recognition of the contribution his late grandfather made in making him who he is today; an established Brazil international upon whom clubs in Italy, France and England have lavished more than €100million (£84.8m; $100m) in transfer fees before his 25th birthday.

The “Brazil premium” is still very much a thing, although just imagine what Paqueta would go for had he been born and raised on Canvey Island in Essex and called Luke Canvey. Presumably, he’d make Jack Grealish look cheap. But we digress.

At Gavea, the boy off the boat impressed. Growing up on an island with no cars, Paqueta played uninterrupted for hours in the streets and on the beach. He had a rare touch and feel for the game.

One of his youth coaches Ze Ricardo marvelled at Paqueta’s universal skill set. He was like every midfielder rolled into one. “He could develop into a No 5, 6, 7, 8, a No 10,” Ze Ricardo told France Football. “He was very intelligent. He knew how to position himself and was fearless.”

But at 15, Paqueta was under-sized for his age. The growth spurt his peers experienced didn’t arrive and all of a sudden the star of Flamengo’s youth sector couldn’t get into the team anymore.

Paqueta didn’t take it very well. He cried and was irritable. Maybe this was it? All those nights catching the last ferry, the 21-mile roundtrip with Mirao. All for what? To go back to being a tour guide on the island, a job Paqueta did for some extra pocket money in his spare time?

His mother wouldn’t stand for it. She went down to the academy and kicked up a fuss.

Flamengo came round to her point of view and drew up a bespoke plan for Paqueta. Targeted nutrition, a bit of power training and fitness work had the desired effect and he shot up, gaining about a foot in height. It was all worth it. Paqueta ran the show as Flamengo’s under-17s won the Copinha and when the club’s first-team coach Muricy Ramalho asked the academy chiefs if they had anyone for him, one teenager stood out.

Not long after making his debut in the Rio state championship, Paqueta scored his first goal in the professional game. It was no ordinary goal either.

Tricks in tight spaces and his knack for making a mark on big occasions — Paqueta scored in the 2017 Copa do Brasil and Copa Sudamericana finals — then quickly made him the darling of Flamengo fans.

Among them was one of their former players, Leonardo, who was back at AC Milan as the club’s sporting director. After hanging up his boots, he had cut his teeth in recruitment working under former chief executive Adriano Galliani.

As the only Brazilian in Milan’s old offices on Via Turati, the signings of Thiago Silva and Alexandre Pato were widely credited to him. One of Leonardo’s first moves upon returning to the club after leaving Paris Saint-Germain and trying his hand at coaching again with Antalyaspor was to attempt to sign the next big thing out of Brazil.

A deal worth €35million was struck with Flamengo in the autumn of 2018 and Paqueta joined the following January. There were echoes of Pato’s arrival a little over a decade earlier and the nostalgia hit hard. Leonardo had accompanied Kaka to Paris to collect his Ballon d’Or in 2007 and, as he left, famously remarked he’d be back with Pato. Injuries ultimately stopped him from fulfilling his potential but the talent was obvious.

Memories of the early Pato, along with the illustrious association between Brazil and the last great Milan sides, loaded tremendous expectation on Paqueta’s shoulders. The rainbow flick he performed on his Serie A debut against Genoa only added to it. Had Leonardo only gone and found the new Kaka?

Fans at San Siro certainly hoped so. After all, this wasn’t 2003, when Kaka joined a Champions League-winning team and people wondered whether this preppy-looking kid from Sao Paulo would get a game amid competition from Manuel Rui Costa and Rivaldo. In 2019, Milan needed a saviour.

The club hadn’t been in the Champions League for five years and would have gone to the wall had Elliott Management not repossessed it from Li Yonghong. The hope projected on Paqueta was that he might almost single-handedly make Milan elite again.

Paqueta’s adaptation wasn’t easy. Whereas in the past there would have been a group of players like Dida, Serginho, Cafu, Thiago Silva, Pato and Kaka to help him settle in, by the time Paqueta arrived at Milanello there were no Brazilians left at the club. The second language at Milan these days is French, not Portuguese, and when Leonardo left six months after signing Paqueta, his protege felt isolated.

Paqueta was only there a year, but the club went through three coaches. When he joined midway through the season, Rino Gattuso had already settled on his best team and couldn’t find a spot for him. Marco Giampaolo told Paqueta to be “less Brazilian and more concrete, less showy”. By the time Stefano Pioli got the job, the direction of travel was hard to reverse and the midfield player who benefited most from his appointment turned out to be Hakan Calhanoglu. Paqueta, in Pioli’s mind, needed to be “more incisive”.

Internally, Milan were of the opinion they had overpaid Flamengo for what Paqueta was at the time. The €21million Lyon were prepared to pay for him in the late summer of 2020 was therefore considered something of a miracle and the 15 per cent sell-on Milan cleverly negotiated means they will get their money back and have a nice windfall ahead of the final week of the transfer window.

There are no regrets, even though Lyon will make close to three times what Paqueta cost them. He has flourished in Ligue 1.

“I put myself under a lot of pressure in Milan,” Paqueta reflected in L’Equipe. “Too much even. When I moved to France I told myself I didn’t have to put myself through that again. I just had to do my best.

“Sometimes there isn’t a reason for failure. My time at Milan wasn’t extraordinary by any means, I probably achieved less than expected, but it served me well and made me a better player; a different, stronger player who rediscovered the essence of what he was at Flamengo. The pressure is still there but it doesn’t come from myself anymore.”

In Lyon, Paqueta found another big club, just not one on the same scale as Milan. The environment was less demanding than San Siro and the league less tactically strait-jacketed than Serie A.

Behind the transfer was another legend of the Brazilian game, the free-kick maestro Juninho Pernambucano, who had been enticed back to Lyon as the club’s sporting director to build a team mixing the best products of Europe’s finest academy with the technical refinement of his home nation, namely Paqueta, Bruno Guimaraes and Thiago Mendes. The team that reached the semi-finals of the 2020 Champions League under Rudi Garcia, upsetting Juventus and Manchester City along the way, evolved from an aggressive, transition-based 3-5-2 to a 4-3-3 which sought control through a neat possession game made possible thanks to the quintet of Brazilians, Houssem Aouar and Maxence Caqueret.

It promised a lot and a 1-0 win away to Mauricio Pochettino’s PSG before Christmas showcased the elegant press-resistant side to Paqueta’s game as he helped Lyon relieve the pressure around their penalty area and get up the pitch. Paqueta offered glimpses of a complete midfielder, whose ability to disrupt opponents as they progressed towards Lyon’s goal married the aesthetic with the aggressive.

On the ball, as his smarterscout profile below shows, he often kept his passing short and sharp, with neat interchange (link-up play volume 86 out of 99) rather than longer, searching balls upfield (progressive passing 27 out of 99). Those actions seemingly kept possession at an above-average rate compared with other central attacking midfielders (ball retention ability 59 out of 99).

Off the ball, Paqueta’s ability to disrupt opponents with his high volume of defensive actions such as tackles and blocks (disrupting opposition moves 98 out of 99) was also highly effective in preventing opponents from progressing towards Lyon’s goal (defending impact 73 out of 99).



Halfway through his first campaign in Ligue 1, L’Equipe named him in their team of the season so far. Once the polemic subsided about Tite prematurely handing Lucas Paqueta the Brazil No 10 shirt for a friendly against Argentina in 2019 — a decision Rivaldo took as a lack of respect for Rivelino, Zico and Ronaldinho — he established himself as a regular. His versatility means he will probably start at the World Cup.

“He has the talent to be one of the top players,” Emerson Palmieri told The Athletic earlier this summer. The Euro 2020 winner spent last season on loan at Lyon and will be reunited with Paqueta after joining West Ham from Chelsea. “He’s still young and I believe we have to have patience with him because sometimes youngsters have ups and downs.”

The oscillating performances Palmieri touches upon refers to the Lyonnais perception of Paqueta as an absolute joy to watch on his day. But he lacks consistency. Garcia felt he needed to show more killer instinct in his passing rather than playing simple, short and sideways.

The team also went backwards in Paqueta’s time, declining from Champions League semi-finalists to no Champions League football at all in back-to-back years. Last season under Peter Bosz was the worst the club has experienced in a quarter of a century. Either the team underperformed or wasn’t as good as people thought. Guimaraes was sold to Newcastle in January to offset some of the lost earnings from missing out on the Champions League and Lyon have gone back to players they can rely on like Alexandre Lacazette and Corentin Tolisso. More substance, less style.

Paqueta was ready for a new challenge but the lacklustre showings he put in over the second half of the last campaign also made Lyon open to moving on. Romain Faivre can replace him between the lines and Jeff Reine Adelaide’s return from injury covers Lyon in midfield.

A fee of up to €60million from West Ham is frankly too good to turn down and would make Paqueta the club’s most lucrative sale after Tanguy Ndombele. West Ham fans will be hoping they get more bang for their buck than Tottenham did for their record signing who returned to Lyon on loan last season and is now at Napoli.

“His quality is there for all to see,” Palmieri said of Paqueta. “He’s a dedicated guy, someone who is obsessed with winning games and competing for titles. He has everything he needs to develop further. I think he has a brilliant future ahead of him.”

Replies - In Chronological Order (Show Newest Messages First)

Sydney_Iron 1:42 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
By the looks of those maps, this fella is "HOT"

ted fenton 1:45 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Thanks Alan.

PwoperNaughtyButNot 2:17 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
All I got from that was that AC Milan were trying to sign Wesley Forfana in 2020 and lost out to Leicester

⚒️ 2:19 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Gonna be so many disappointed people on here :-(

Oh well, we’re getting Percy Ingles from Belgium! :-)

Bernie 2:36 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
⚒️ 2:19 Thu Aug 25

Give it a rest you fucking melt

⚒️ 2:37 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Turn it in, Berkie.

Mr Kenzo 2:44 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Paqueta Done Deal

goose 2:45 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Nicolò Schira
@NicoSchira
·
Follow
#WestHam are ready to increase the bid to submit to #OlympiqueLyonnais to sign Lucas #Paqueta. #OL have turned down the first offer (€40M). #Hammers have already reached an agreement in principle with the brazilian player for a contract until 2027 (€5M/year). #transfers #WHUFC

Kaiser Zoso 2:51 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Not a massive lover of heat maps, if I'm honest.

BRANDED 2:58 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
I love a heat map on holiday

Sven Roeder 3:24 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Dont know the player and have no recollection of him vs us for Lyon so will bow to connoisseurs of the French league
Though Hammers News are getting excited by the idea of a midfield known as PAQUETA RICE

Would we go for him and the Belgian or is it an either or?
Sounds like he would play in Souceks place with Vanaken as a number 10

IF WE SIGN EITHER OF COURSE

Hammer and Pickle 4:36 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Just because yours is all between the fridge and microwave, there’s nothing wrong with heat maps, Lippy.

charleyfarley 5:27 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta

West Ham have improved their offer for Lyon star Lucas Paqueta after having their initial bid rejected.

Having seen the opening offer of €40million plus add-ons turned down, the Hammers have returned with a new offer close to the €60 million figure the Ligue 1 side are seeking for the Brazilian international.

According to reliable French source L'Equipe, West Ham's latest bid for Paqueta consists of €42 million in cash with a further €15 million to follow in add-ons which, it is suggested, could be easily met.

And while that figure is some way short of the club's record fee, the £45million paid to Frankfurt for Sebastien Haller in 2019 it would nonetheless be worth more if all (€15million) bonuses were eventually met - a total of £48million.

While Lyon are yet to respond, it would appear likely that a deal is close to being struck. And with the players' agents reportedly in London, that could happen sooner rather than later.

Hammer and Pickle 5:44 Thu Aug 25
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Yes, this could be on as I have it on good authority that his Portuguese cousin, the agent Costa Paqueta, has not travelled.

Eerie Descent 9:23 Fri Aug 26
Re: Lucas Paqueta
It looks like this is really happening. I can't quite believe it to be honest, a lad who has regularly played in a top Brazil team in the 10 shirt, who is not even in his prime yet. Madness.

I'm not happy with how late we've left a lot of these deals, but this signing really is some statement given the other deals that we've done. Everyone now surely has to give the owners credit and hold their hands up and admit that they've had the dough there ready to spend all along.

Let's hope he's signed in time to be involved Sunday!

Manuel 9:27 Fri Aug 26
Re: Lucas Paqueta
ED - Hold on, according to Oxsaw and certain other posters (they know who they are) the owners will be happy with 17th each season and will only spend the minimum?

I also read from the oh so clever ones on here, that they have no motive to spend big as they are selling up next year??

Such wisdom, clearly wasted on here!

fraser 9:37 Fri Aug 26
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Morning Manuel... He said, she said :-)

This definitely looks like it's happening.. Be great if he could be signed in time to warm the bench Sunday

Eerie Descent 9:42 Fri Aug 26
Re: Lucas Paqueta
The amount of times that shit is repeated on here, Manners!

As I said, we've left it late, but I really do think that's down to the manager. However, in the cold light of day..

Areola
Aguerd
Kehrer
Emerson
Downes
Cornet
Paqueta
Scamacca

That is some window. And I sill think we'll bring the Belgian in, who replaces Soucek. Looking at the best team going forward if we do..

------------------------------------ Areola -------------------------------------

Kehrer --------------- Zouma ----------- Aguerd -------------- Emerson

------------------------ Rice (c) ---------- Vanaken -------------------------

Bowen ------------------------ Paqueta -------------- Cornet/Benrahma

--------------------------------- Scamacca ------------------------------------

Vexed 9:43 Fri Aug 26
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Moyes will scupper the deal by telling the lad he's going to be back up for Lanzini

Manuel 9:43 Fri Aug 26
Re: Lucas Paqueta
Erh, hardly the same thing, son. I'm talking about the know it all's that plague these boards with their 'wisdom' not quoting a managers on something trivial, ffs.

Were you one of the posters who said they won't be spending this summer 'coz they are (apparently) selling up next year? Nothing worse than a know it all, son.

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