Who is Máximo Perrone, Manchester City’s announced signing?

The January transfer window has opened and with it, alongside club football, the transfer fever has returned, full of speculation, information from journalists’ sources and fans waiting for that famous ‘Here we go’. We know some of the players we hope to see holding the jersey of our favourite team in front of a crowd of photographers very well. Others, whose names are being bandied about in connection with a possible transfer, we are hearing for the first time. For many, this is the case with Máximo Perrone. So let’s talk about him.

Máximo Perrone. This name has been linked in recent days with a possible transfer to one of the top clubs in the world, Manchester City. Would you say that the player who is expected to come in to strengthen Pep Guardiola’s selection will probably be someone we have already heard of? In this case, the opposite seems to be true.

Perrone hasn’t had many opportunities to reach out to European football fans and etch himself in their memories. After all, he’s only had his first season in adult football. At the young age of just nineteen years old, Perrone made his way into the first team of Vélez Sarsfield in the Liga Profesional, the highest football competition in Argentina.

From the same competition he signed last year and in the summer the Manchester club brought in another player, Julian Álvarez. Unlike the newly crowned World Cup winner, however, Perrone has not played for any of the teams at the top of the table in Argentina, be it River Plate, Racing Club or Boca Juniors.

His Vélez was third from the bottom of the table, in 26th place. A more complex relegation mechanism ensures they will continue in the top flight for next year, but Perrone is unlikely to be affected.

At this point, it might be useful to add that the Liga Profesional runs from the beginning of January to the end of December, similar to, say, MLS. So, with a contract until December 31, 2023, Perrone is now entering the final year of his contract after the New Year, and this is one of the last opportunities for the club to monetize its homegrown talent.

And the fact that Perrone is a talent has been noticed by the national team, for whose U20s the young Argentine played his first, but also his only game so far, last March. He was called up to the youth national team by the legendary Javier Mascherano, who coaches Argentina’s U20s, which draws an interesting parallel here.

Máximo is in fact, like his national manager, a combative central defensive midfielder. The left-footed midfielder, who in his one year of professional adult football has run nearly 2,500 minutes across the Liga Profesional, Libertadores, Copa de la Liga and Copa Argentina, has a high action radius. Getting involved in the game can really see him everywhere between the whitewash.

So, I chose the defensive designation mainly because he recorded 3.3 tackles per 90 minutes of football in the league. This puts him in very select company compared to other midfielders outside the top five leagues. In fact, only 4% of midfielders surpass his production in this metric.

He complements his defensive contributions with 1.1 passes defended and 1.5 blocks per the same time unit. However, as mentioned above, Perrone has played on a team from the lower reaches of the table. We expect higher defensive numbers there because such teams usually defend more.

That’s why it’s pleasing to see the announced reinforcement of the current Premier League Cup winner attacking 3 opposing dribblers every game, coming out successful in 54% of attempts. His success rate in this regard tells us that although he is forced to defend more, we can assume that he can find a use for his defensive skills in a unit that controls the ball more.

A closer analysis of his aforementioned blocks looks similarly positive. 1.38 of the 1.49 blocked balls are blocked passes, not shots. Thus, the high number in this comparison doesn’t stem from Perrone just standing in the way of so many shots and simply having one bounce off him here and there.

So we can judge that he can indeed defend. Whatever, a young defensive midfielder would probably be useful to City, but it’s not enough to play in Guardiola’s system. Moreover, we can see from Perrone’s numbers that passing is not one of his strengths. Again, this will surely be down to his team’s style of play.

Even as a defensive midfielder, who by the nature of his position should be more in the game, he only attempts 37 passes every game he plays. That’s very little indeed. A success rate below 80% is then also rather a cause for concern. But we can see from the cuts and other numbers that Perrone likes to hold the ball and then try to come up with something creative with it.

This can be supported by the fact that 3.4 of his 37 passes are conducted as progressive (they move the play by >10 yards or get the ball into the opponent’s penalty area), then maybe 1 successfully completed dribble every game played or 0.2 assists in the same period. Then Perrone can also shoot from long range or run into the box and finish.

Plus, he doesn’t lose the ball too much off his feet or take unnecessary shots. He needs to work on his aerial success rate, but so does every young player who is still growing into his body. Plus, at just under ‘6’3″, no one expects him to necessarily be a natural header.

In more ways than one, then, we can see how Perrone could replace Ilkay Gündogan in Manchester City’s line-up long-term.

That’s also why Fabrizio Romano’s latest information that Perrone would be signed directly for City’s parent club group, not perhaps New York City as originally thought, and that he would bolster the Sky Blues ranks right after the South American Under-20 Championship in late January, which he is expected to attend, makes sense. So there’s a real chance we could see him on the Premier League turf later this season.

Sources: Fbref, Understat, Transfermarkt, Fabrizio Romano