Player Focus: Rio Mavuba (Lille)

Football teams are made up of all different types of characters; you have your superstars, your tricky wingers, brave-heart defenders and penalty-box strikers. However, every team has a player that never gets the plaudits, will never make the front of magazines and fans don’t jump at the chance to have their name on the back of their jerseys. It is these players though that lift a team to success, without these types of players’ championships and trophies will always evade you.

When Didier Deschamps took over the job as French National team manager one of the first moves he made was to recall midfielder Rio Mavuba into his squad. The 28-year old former Villarreal midfielder has played a part in all three of Deschamps games so far and France have remained unbeaten, conceding only one goal. Many thought that Mavuba would only be a stop gap until Yann M’Vila could play his way back into Deschamps plans, with two years to go until the World Cup in Brazil, could the then 30-year old Mavuba be the unsung hero that can anchor the French midfield and provide the insurance that Les Bleus have lacked since Claude Makéléle hung up his boots?

At 19 Mavuba made his debut for Bordeaux under Elie Baup and would go on to play over 120 games for Les Girondins, he would take his chance and make a €7 million move to Spain joining Villarreal, though the former French U21 would struggle to get games for the Yellow Submarine and when the transfer window opened in January new Lille boss Rudi Garcia jumped at the chance to bring Mavuba into the club on loan. The return to France seemed to fit everyone, Mavuba was back to playing football again and he instantly took to the Lille midfield with confidence and a new sense of maturity. Lille lost fellow midfielder Jean Makoun to Lyon that summer and half of the €14 million transfer fee was spent on making Mavuba’s deal permanent. Looking back it is one of the best pieces of business the club has ever done.

Mavuba is the man who makes Lille tick; he is the brains, the engine room, the heart and the soul. When you look at the side that Rudi Garcia has built, everything that it stands for is embodied in Rio Mavuba. The crazy patterns in his hair have disappeared but the intelligent, hard-working and indispensable midfielder that Garcia brought to the club four years ago has gone from strength to strength. No player so far in Ligue 1 averages more touches of the ball than Rio Mavuba this season, averaging 96.3 passes in the three games he has played so far, with 93% of these passes reaching their destination.

Every move that Lille starts on the pitch goes through Mavuba, playing as the deepest midfielder in the new look 4-2-3-1 formation, the club relies on Mavuba’s superb positional sense to protect and aid the defence. When the full backs push forward acting like wingers Mavuba is always the first to drop into the space, reading the game fantastically well, something he does all over the pitch. So far this season he is averaging 3.3 tackles a game and 2 interceptions. These stats over the past two years have not dropped below two and you will struggle to find a more consistent player around Europe, especially one that is still so unknown outside of France.

As a defensive midfielder you would expect him to pick up lots of meaningless fouls, flittering with suspension for most of the season, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. This season, over the three games, Mavuba has committed just one foul. One foul! In contrast, Sandro at Spurs, Abou Diaby of Arsenal and Lee Cattermole up in Sunderland have committed six fouls, and Cattermole has only played two games. Jeremy Clement of Saint-Etienne has committed 10 fouls already this season.

This is not a one off occurrence either. When Lille won the league back in 2011 Mavuba averaged 0.9 fouls a game, and when defending that championship Mavuba only committed 39 fouls over the whole of last season. Arsenal’s Alex Song picked up 73 fouls in the same period while only making 100 tackles, with Mavuba making 80 tackles last season. Mavuba’s game is not based on last-ditch tackles; it is based around reading the opponents moves and intercepting and clearing the danger without having to make risky challenges. At this moment in time there are not many players in Europe that read the game better than Lille’s Captain.

When Lille came back from a first leg deficit against Copenhagen to reach the Champions League Group Stage the performance by Mavuba in the home leg was crucial; dominating the midfield with his partner Florent Balmont, the Danes never stood a chance. Once the midfield battle was won, it was only a matter of time before Lille scored the goals to see them through.

He will never score the goals to win you many games, averaging one a season, but what he will give you is organisation, fight, will, determination and an anchor to build your team around - the exact qualities that France could have done with during the recent Euro 2012 tournament. It seems that in Mavuba, Didier Deschamps may have found his new anchor.