Football supporters are so tribalistic it’s inevitable that they love to talk down the abilities and achievements of players at rival clubs. It doesn’t matter that Jurgen Klopp believes Trent Alexander-Arnold is a great defender, if someone on Twitter with a Kevin De Bruyne avatar doesn’t then they’ll be more than happy to let you know about it.
What is far less common is a former player of a club criticising one of that team’s current stars. Yet that is how Champions League and treble winning midfielder Dietmar Hamann has recently treated Thiago Alcantara, and not for the first time.
“I don't understand the hype about Thiago,” he wrote in a column for Sky Sports. “For me he is one of the most overrated players in European football. When things are going well and you have a lot of possession he's a good player, but when push comes to shove you don't see him."
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Whether any player is under or overrated is a difficult thing to assess as it’s all personal opinion. Neither your writer nor most likely you the reader know as much about playing midfield at the highest level as the former Germany international either.
It’s hard not to think that ‘The Kaiser’ is wide of the mark on this matter though, particularly with his assertion that Alcantara is only good when “things are going well.”
After all, the Reds title hopes were looking in tatters before Thiago played a sublime back-heeled assist to Sadio Mane for the equalising goal in the eventual 3-1 win over Wolves on the final day of the domestic season. While the pass was far less impressive, the former Barcelona man also set up Liverpool’s tying goal in the 1-1 draw with Tottenham, another instance of him contributing when things were not in his side’s favour.
And though he couldn’t prevent the Reds from suffering defeat in the Champions League final, it’s not as if Thiago hid from responsibility during his 77 minutes on the pitch in Paris. He had one of Liverpool’s nine shots on target, set up another for Sadio Mane – the first half effort which Thibaut Courtois tipped onto the post – and played the penultimate pass for a shot from the joint-second closest to goal that the Reds managed with any of their 24 attempts.
The latter was a good example of what has always been a strength of the current owner of Liverpool’s number six shirt. Thiago is the king of the pass before the pass, the one which sets up a chance creator rather than assisting chances too often himself.
Against Real Madrid he completed 11 progressive passes (those which move the ball forward 10 yards or into the box), the most of any player on either side. Similarly, his total of 10 passes into the final third was only matched by Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Clearly there is some overlap in those two statistics, but the match in Paris was one of only 17 instances in the 51 matches Liverpool played in league and Europe in 2021/22 in which one of their players hit double figures for both metrics. Thiago hit this benchmark in seven other games too, doing so in high-profile matches against Everton, Manchester United, Tottenham and Villarreal (among others).
His consistency means he has been in the top eight players in either the Bundesliga or Premier League as appropriate for completed passes into the final third in each of the last five campaigns, and the top 10 for progressive passes for the last four. While these are Thiago’s strongest attributes, there’s evidence he makes the team better in all regards when he plays. He was second in the Premier League for expected goal difference per 90 minutes (as in, the team’s xGD when he was on the pitch) and third for goal difference this season too.
These are also just numbers on a page, they say nothing for the aesthetic brilliance which Alcantara frequently serves up for his adoring public. Barely a game goes by where Kopites don’t eulogise one of Thiago’s passes in their post-match discussions. If he is overrated as Hamann suggests, then the only conclusion is that the German must have impossibly high standards.
