Leicester City bid €50 million Barcelona winger

Leicester City’s hunt for an elite winger in the transfer market has been widely acknowledged and well-documented, with a lot of the speculation surrounding players applying their trade in England.

The highest-profile Leicester City link has been with Brazilian-international, Philippe Coutinho. The FC Barcelona winger spent last season on loan at Bayern Munich and has struggled to replicate his stellar performances from his Liverpool tenure.

The latest link, as of the well-respected journalist, Fabrizio Romano, is another player from Coutinho’s parent club – FC Barcelona. Francisco Trincão spent the 2019/20 campaign playing in the Liga NOS for SC Braga and established a name for himself in doing so.

He signed for FC Barcelona in January 2020 for a fee of €31 million, but the starlet stayed with the Portuguese club for the remainder of the season.

The 20-year-old has yet to make an appearance for the Catalan-club, however, he’s got a staggering €500 million release clause, although I doubt Leicester City will be pursuing that sort of fee – the rumoured valuation is in the region of €50 million.

Trincão’s stats for the season are excellent, in just 1,606 minutes in the Liga Nos he’s directly contributed to 14 goals (eight goals and six assists), that’s a contribution every 114.71 minutes of football – which eclipses the numbers of both Harvey Barnes (every 148.79 minutes) and Ayoze Pérez (167 minutes).

Outside of goal contributions, Trincão has also measured well. He creates an average of 1.9 goal-scoring opportunities per 90 minutes of football, and completes a staggering 3.5 take-on’s every 90 minutes. The latter of these two statistics should be exciting for Foxes fans, as currently, there’s a real lack of incisive take-on play from the wingers – adding this will create a level of unpredictability to Leicester City’s attacking play.

It’s hard to compare the profile of Trincão to any of the current Foxes squad, as he offers an array of qualities. Looking directly at his goal contributions would suggest he’s of a similar mould to Barnes, yet he also boasts an impressive number of crosses per 90 minutes of football – 3.71 – although that doesn’t come close to Marc Albrighton’s 7.08 crosses per 90.

In fact, if there’s a profile comparison, it would most likely be former Leicester City winger, Riyad Mahrez. This is most notably for his stronger left-foot whilst operating on the right-wing, and the possibility of using both feet whilst running at his defender.

There is a few further stylistic comparisons, the cutting back onto his left to provide a deep-cross to the back-post. The ability to suck in his defender before narrowly touching it passed them, either drawing a foul or beating his man – both of which are beneficial, and is always done with confidence and flair.

Lastly, the vision and passing weight to play through balls into advancing runners (ordinarily, the striker – which would be great for Jamie Vardy). This is one of the main reasons he’s averaging 1.3 key passes per 90 minutes.

Trincão’s profile is a good match for Leicester, he subsidies the lack of ball-carrying and ability to dribble passed his opponent, that is so evidently lacking from the Foxes currently. He combines this with great goal-creation numbers as well. A good acquisition and with Trincão being 20-years-old, there’s a likelihood he’ll improve and not only double his market value, but help secure consistent European football for Leicester City.