Manchester City buy Jeremy Docu from Rennes

The strongest club in Europe last season Manchester City is preparing to make a very interesting transfer. For £ 55 million, he buys Belgian Jeremy Docu from the French Rennes. The 21-year-old winger, who had a great end to last season, is an exceptionally efficient dribbler.

The fact that Manchester City, which last season finally added victory in the Champions League to the already familiar English championship gold, agreed on the transfer of Jeremy Docu from Rennes, was reported by all the largest British media resources. They estimate the transfer fee at £55m, making Doku one of the top 15 most expensive purchases made by English clubs during this summer’s transfer campaign.

For Manchester City, the acquisition of Jeremy Docu will be only the third in its framework. Before the Belgian, midfielder Mateo Kovacic and defender Joshko Guardiol moved from Chelsea and Leipzig to the club. Both deals have replenished the already powerful Manchester squad with extremely valuable players. But the deal with Doku looks no less interesting, although its price is almost half the one that Manchester City had to pay for Guardiola, who cost the English flagship £ 90 million.

Almost every British publication that writes about her calls Jeremy Doka the replacement for Riyad Mahrez, the famous Algerian footballer who was recently lured from Manchester City by the Saudi Arabian Al-Ahly. However, this does not appear to be the correct wording. Formally, the main position on the Doku field actually coincides with the one played by Mahrez. Both are wingers who prefer to play on the right. But there are more differences.

The main thing is age. Riyad Mahrez is a veteran in his 30s who, back in the previous season, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola already clearly perceived more as a bench player who provides depth to the team’s attack. Jeremy Doku, he took, no doubt, both for the sake of the present – the struggle for a place in the starting lineup, say, with Phil Foden – and primarily for the sake of perspective.

The Belgian only turned 21 in May. At the same time, he has already managed to take part in 16 matches of his national team, the degree of competition in the offensive line of which, as you know, has been extremely high in recent years.

Doku was released on the field in her jersey even in the matches of the European Championship in 2021 and the World Cup in 2022.

At the same time, Doku’s progress would certainly have been much more noticeable if it were not for the injuries that spoiled him the season before last, the second in Rennes, where he moved as a teenager from Anderlecht in Brussels. Getting rid of them, the Belgian immediately forced analysts covering the French championship to include himself among the brightest young players playing in it, thanks primarily to an excellent second half of the tournament. And Sky Sports expert on French football Tom Williams, commenting on the upcoming transfer, generally called Doc’s potential “limitless”, referring to the benefits that he can bring to the English giant.

This benefit is associated with an almost unique set of qualities of Jeremy Doku. Riyad Mahrez is a very technical and subtle footballer. But Doku, in addition to technique, has just fantastic speed and the ability to work almost equally well with both his right and left legs. Ideally, his abilities and style features are illustrated by statistics. But not the most obvious one. In the case of Doku, it is more correct to look closely not at his performance (in the previous French championship, the striker had six goals in 29 matches), but at the so-called advanced statistics.

It also records the number of dribbling passes made by players. So, last season, in attempts to dribble past rival Jeremy Docu, he was 14th, if we take the Big Five championships, but it was in terms of successful dribbles – third with a chic indicator of 8.73 on average per match. Slightly ahead of Doku were the great Lionel Messi, who left PSG for the American Inter Miami, and Vinicius from Real Madrid. Moreover, Doku has already demonstrated the skills of an exceptionally effective dribbler in top-level games. For example, many observers remembered his appearance in the quarterfinals of the European Championship two years ago. In it, the Belgians lost to the then gold-winning Italian team, but their young striker hit everyone with eight successful dribble attempts. And this is against the Italian defense, which was in excellent shape.

Alexey Dospekhov