VVV-Venlo lost Roel Janssen to Fortuna Sittard and needed a new left-back in their squad. This has been the hardest position to recruit in the last seasons with Roel Janssen, Leroy Labylle, Axel Borgmann and Jason Bourdouxhe. Roel Janssen was signed from Fortuna Sittard, but he played as a full back in Sittard and he never was the vibrant left back VVV-Venlo needed in attack.
VVV-Venlo has had some terrific right backs over the last few years who could attack, make a run down the line and give a decent cross. In that profile they have a found very experienced left back at the moment: Lukas Schmitz.
Player profile:
- Nationality: German
- Age: 31
- Date of birth: 13/10/1988
- Current club: VVV-Venlo
- Career: TSG Sprockhövel (Y), VFL Bochum (Y), TSG Sprockhövel (Y), VFL Bochum, Schalke 04, Werder Bremen, Fortuna Düsseldorf, Wolfsberger AC
- Position: Left back
- Secondary position: Defensive midfielder
- Preferred foot: Left
In the last season Lukas Schmitz played for Wolfsberger AC in the Austrian Bundesliga. He played 31 games in the Bundesliga, 1 game in the Austrian Cup and 6 games in the Europa League where he faced Borussia Mönchengladbach, AS Roma and Basaksehir. He scored a total of 1 goals and provided 2 assists.
Schmitz is an excellent defender who is strong, has pace and good awareness of the ball. He doesn’t dive into tackles and is patient in the 1v1’s – which makes him calm en trustworthy for the other defenders. His defensive awareness is good as he looks at the passing lines and makes sure he covers enough ground to press his direct opponent as well as intercepting the ball from a pass.
He is strong in the duels both on the ground as in the air, although his physical appearance is not massive. His passing style is to pass the ball back to the central defender or give it to the creative players in the midfield in order to construct an attack. He passes short, but he can give a good through ball when he finds himself in the position to do so and can bring threat to the opponents’ box. His crosses are very decent and when there are players who play as a central forward, they could directly benefit from this.
As you can see in the heatmap above, he doesn’t only occupy the left-back position but also moves forward. He either does that to give the attacking players freedom to move to the box or he makes a run down the line and provides a cross for the strikers playing. VVV-Venlo were looking for a left-back who could attack and have meaning going forward, as well as defend properly. In his movement, Schmitz is exactly that left-back.
Schmitz plays as a left-back in a four-man defence. In his last season as a player of Wolfsberger AC, 80% of the formations used, was a 4-3-1-2, and Schmitz played on the left-back position. There were variations to the formation with a 4-2-3-1(3%), 4-1-3-2(3%) and 4-2-2-2(3%). One formation was a little bit different with three at the back with a 3-4-1-2(3%) formation and Schmitz played as a left wing-back in those games, utilising his attacking skills.
As I said above, Schmitz is a replacement for Roel Janssen and in the eye test it looks that Schmitz is an improvement overall. If we look at the comparison tool that Smarterscout has below, we can see a few interesting things.
The attacking features are clearly better with Schmitz if we look at this, but Janssen is better with the passes towards goal and disrupting. Now it seems that Schmitz is a better player on almost each statistic, but I wanted to make sure we also had a proper look at the data.
In the graphs below you can see scatterplots. These two scatterplots are designed to show the attacking quality and the defending quality, in order to make a comparison between players.
Lukas Schmitz is quite ordinary in the Eredivisie with his number on the defending side of the game. He is surrounded by Meijers, Paal, Tagliafico and Haps – all who are known to be better on the attacking side of the game. If you look at the top players, you can see that Roel Janssen has very good stats on defensive duels won and interception per 90. In the defending data, you could conclude that Janssen was better.
In the attacking stats you can see a different story. Roel Janssen is nowhere near the leaders on left back position, while Schmitz is doing pretty good compared to the attacking Eredivisie left backs. He may not be the best attacking left back, but the incentive is there and that’s what we need at VVV-Venlo.
I would say we could be very excited with a left-back like Schmitz and he will go on to let us see some quality stuff. If he remains fit, he could play a vital role in staying.
