Here’s my only thing on Veiga. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a talent. Physically gifted, has an innate sense to arrive on crosses, tidy finisher, quick feet, energetic, all-around.
However - he doesn’t do any work in the first phase of buildup and is not a deep midfielder whatsoever, an 8 who needs to be advanced and not particularly gifted with passing or vision. Yeah, that can still be a great profile, but something about him screams to me the same uneasy feeling I had about Jenas, Paulinho, Dele, more recently Matheus Nunes, where they have these gaudy G/A totals but don’t really impact games as much as you’d think.
My issue is what does he excel at? Our best midfielders have always been specialists. Eriksen, Dembele, Luka, Carrick, Ginola, VDV, Gazza, Hoddle, Mackey etc. you can point to all of them and say, he was very close to the best in the world at this specific part of the game, be it dribbling, close control, stamina, long range shots, vision, tackling, crossing, free kicks, etc. Each one of them had something truly special in them, they were all well-rounded too, but each of them had that piece of true clsss in their locker that made them unique to any other midfielder in the world.
Veiga I don’t think has that, or at least, I question what his stand-out skill is.
And here’s why I’m cautious. Hasn’t he been linked with all the top clubs? All of them? City, the Spanish giants, Woolwich, Bayern I believe, Liverpool, the hits keep on coming. Why hasn’t anyone pulled the trigger on him, the summer where he was supposedly the darling of half of Europe? That concerns me.
He’s probably better than Gallagher tbf. But I don’t feel he’s a star. Look below, those are shocking passing statistics!
