Luis “The King of Pancakes” Sinisterra signs for Leeds!
Salutations and welcome to another one of my transfer articles, this time about our first ever Colombian signing Luis Sinisterra who signs from Feyenoord for a fee which breaks their transfer record and is believed to be around £20–25mil.
This transfer came relatively out of nowhere first we heard of it was on 4th July when Fabrizio Romano broke a Telegraaf story quickly prompting Phil Hay to tap it in and confirm it was legitimate.
Sinisterra is expected to be the replacement for Raphinha, which are some tremendously talented shoes to fill, but this lad comes highly rated and I’m very excited about the potential.
Background & Playing Career
Luis is 23 years old and started his playing career with Colombian Primera A side Once Caldas, who he played for in the senior side between 2016–2018.
He then signed for Feyenoord in the 18/19 season for around 2million Euros which seems a very low cost fee for what is now going to be their club record departure. Luis didn’t play much in his first season for Feyenoord however he very quickly started being a regular part of the team in the 19/20 season.
However Luis suffered a cruciate ligament injury towards the end of the 19/20 season which ruled him out for the final 4 games of that season as well as 11 games in the beginning of the 20/21 season, this could have been a disaster for him however he recovered well from this injury.
In fact since he recovered in December 2020 he has a pretty good injury record and as long as he is managed well we should be able to prevent future issues.
Sinisterra has gone from strength to strength since his recovery, coming off the back of his best club season ever playing 49 games across all competitions contributing a whopping 37 goal contributions including 23 goals & 14 assists.
Luis is a senior international with 5 appearances for Colombia so far, however at the national level he hasn’t quite found his footing yet, not contributing to any goals as so far.
As you can see from the above Luis’ Eredivisie stats are superb, in fact in the league he was joint 10th top scorer and joint 7th for Non Penalty goals in the whole of the league, on top of this he won the Europa conference league Young player of the season with 6 goals & 4 assists across 12 appearances.
Luis is primarily a left winger, although he has played on the right and even as centre forward, you are losing a lot of his game from moving him away from the left side so we will probably be much more likely to see him on the left side of our attack.
Playing Style
Now I want to dive into what kind of player we’ve signed, usually I would show you some more advanced stats, however it is harder to find advanced data for the Eredivisie.
I do have some data which I will use to embellish certain points about the type of player he is, however most of this next section will be in video or written format.
As we’ve already said he is replacing Raphinha and we all know now what type of player Raphinha is. To put it plainly, he was fun. He loved to entertain us in whatever way he could. Which did mean he took a lot of risks. He would play a lot of long speculative balls, try to run by his man nearly every opportunity and try things most other footballers wouldn’t dream of.
Most of the above is pretty typical of a Brazilian flair player and it’s what you would expect from them. Brazil has a rich culture of producing entertaining attacking players going back to the likes of Ronaldinho, Rivaldo, Ronaldo Nazario etc….
However what you maybe wouldn’t expect is how hard working Raphinha was, he fit effortlessly into Marcelo Bielsa’s system. He was capable of meeting the physical demands Marcelo would put on him and didn’t grumble about it.
There is similarities between Luis & Raphinha, but there are also differences. Both players like to try to do unexpected things with the ball. Both players like to run at their opposition and in general be fun to watch, but the differences come in the way they achieve their goals.
Firstly any stats in this section come from WhoScored, they aren’t my preferred data provider but I have to work with what I have.
It should be noted that any passing data can be heavily influenced by team style and relevant rank in their respective divisions, Feyenoord finished 3rd in Eredivisie last season and are generally one of the better teams in the league, so please keep this in mind in all stat comparisons.
As you can see there is a difference in their passing stats, Raphinha tries a lot more long passes and they are generally quite speculative, hence the low completion. However it should be noted that in Raphinha’s debut season for Leeds he was attempting less overall long balls as we saw a change of his tactical instructions which has lowered his completion rates across the two seasons.
You can also see Sinisterra plays more short passes and generally has a higher completion rate across both short and long passing. This could be relevant to their respective league’s or team style but I do feel that Luis generally takes less risks with his passing as part of his natural game.
While watching Luis I noticed that the doesn’t take a lot of risks with his passing, generally preferring to progress the ball with ball carrying and keeping his passing simple, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t take risks, just less of them than Raphinha does. This is something we may see change as Jesse has mentioned he likes his players to be brave with the ball.
However it isn’t a bad thing that Luis prefers shorter passing, his passing style will help us to keep hold of the ball and he is very good at dropping deeper to help facilitate build-up play from the middle third to the final third, he likes to help out when defending and when doing so his passing is generally accurate which will help us escape pressure.
In addition when he does drop deep he attempts one two passing to help get by players, in the below clip he initiates this entire move, this was in the Europa Conference League final vs Roma. He really tried in this game to drag Feyenoord forward.
Regarding creating chances for his team mates, Luis created 117 Key Passes(Pass leading to a shot)in 85 app’s for Feyenoord, of those there were 114 short passes & 3 long passes. This shows that he isn’t likely to create many chances from long passes in a similar way to what we have seen from Raphinha and will mainly see shorter pass creation.
However just because he doesn’t often create in this manner, it doesn’t mean that he isn’t capable. In the below clip he nabs an assist from a very nice long ball into the area.
Luis has a very good first touch, and generally an even better second touch which helps him to receive the ball and then quickly move with it. This can aid him to escape pressing and keep hold of the ball, when he uses this alongside his considerable agility & acceleration he can quickly leave behind any man behind with a quick drop of the shoulder.
As you can see from the above data, both Sinisterra & Raph attempt a comparable amount of dribbles, however Sinisterra’s dribble completion is much higher, remember here that the strength of opposition is a lot less in Eredivisie and I’d expect this to be lower in the Premier League.
We know Raphinha was best at starting in a wide position and moving infield, whereas with Luis you will see a player who is just as good starting in a central position. This bodes well for him adapting to the style of play Jesse Marsch will try to implement.
The below two clips shows how some good examples of what you’ll see from Luis when not on the ball, he can drop deep invert, and the second clip shows how he can keep in the same inverted area but occupies the final line ready for a pass to be played beyond him, both of which will be necessary under Jesse Marsch.
What will be important is not only Luis’ ability to drop deep and link up play but also his ability to be an option to play long passes beyond the defense so it isn’t only the striker the back line has to be wary of, in the below clip you see Luis time his run well and help create chance by keeping hold of the ball and laying it off to the edge of the box.
So far we haven’t touched on Sinisterra’s defensive ability, in this regard when it comes to stats, I don’t have access to his pressing data as this isn’t a metric which Whoscored has. However I do have the below which does give us a good idea of his defensive contributions.
I expected Raphinha to have higher numbers in this area, most Leeds players under Bielsa show good numbers for defensive stats, this is in part down to the man marking style increasing the general number of defensive contributions players make, especially attacking players.
However Sinisterra’s numbers aren’t dramatically lower than Raphinha which bodes well that he will be able to fit in seamlessly in our pressing structure under Marsch.
In addition while watching Luis play I didn’t notice any glaring issues about his ability to both press well and the ability to continue pressing later in the game too. I did see a desire from Luis to win the ball back when he loses the ball which is something I’m sure the Leeds crowd will adore as they admire a player with a high work rate.
In the below clip, firstly you should notice that Luis is actually sitting wider and his fullback(No5) is inverted and actually ahead of him, secondly you will see that when the attacker mis-controlled Luis’s pass inside the area and ceding possession that Luis immediately moves to press the attacker.
In the next clip you initially see Luis pressing the CB, then when the pass is released to the fullback he chases the fullback and then when the fullback passes the ball on Luis stays with the fullback to ensure his man is tracked, this is good defensive awareness by the young Colombian.
Finally we move on to shooting, Sinisterra has fantastic ball striking ability as well as positioning to get into places to shoot from, in the below clip you can see a great example of his ability from outside the box, pick that one out son.
But the next clip I like even more, firstly you notice it is Sinisterra who starts this whole move with a lovely pass for his striker, he then makes his way into the box timing his run very well and then finishes with too much power for the keeper to handle.
Conclusions
I am extremely excited about this signing, I feel we have paid a very good fee for a player with a lot of potential. Even younger than Raphinha was when he first signed for us and with just as much experience as Raphinha when he first signed.
While we won’t see many moments of sheer passing creativity from Luis, what we will see is lots of fun dribbling and ball carrying, but topped off with a maturity in his decision making as to when to commit to progressing the ball or to play it safe and hold possession.
He will need some time to adjust to the League as a whole but adapt I think he shall, and will prove to be a player capable of replacing most of what Raphinha brought us on the pitch.
Thank you for reading and I hope to see you soon
Martin Riley
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