Italy, Spain, Brazil, Ireland, France, Belgium and England. 7 replicas of 7 legends from 7 countries already identified in this series so far, why stop now? We nearly have a full first XI assembled with one player from each nationality, and today we visit another footballing nation of excellence as we turn our focus to one of Portugal’s greatest ever exports and look to identify his modern day footballing counterpart.
The rules are simple - any modern day replica identified must be of the same nationality as the legend at hand, and must be aged 23 or under in order to qualify and earn the mantle as the next big thing. Before Cristiano Ronaldo there was one man above all that ruled Portuguese football. Are we confident that we can somehow piece together the key attributes to find ourselves the next Luis Figo? #HereWeGo.
You'll struggle to find a player who has played close to 800 competitive games consistently at the top level of world football. On top of that, Luis Figo grabbed 127 caps for Portugal including 32 goals for his nation. The pacey winger is regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation and his 106 assists in La Liga are the second most in the competition's history, behind one Lionel Messi. Not many players would have braved a transfer directly from Barcelona to Real Madrid but when you're as decorated and talented as Luis Figo, you can probably do as you please and eventually things will work out. They certainly did - across his career Figo won eight league titles, a Champions League and countless individual awards including the Ballon d'Or award in 2000 at a time when nominees included the likes of Zidane, Shevchenko, Henry and David Beckham who we covered in last week’s episode of this series.
Figo had a solid 20+ year career and despite being known predominantly as a winger, the Portuguese wizard moved into more of a playmaker and attacking midfield role as he started to lose the mobility and pace which made him ferocious for club and country for so many years. It'll be tricky for a player to ever emulate the style and skill of Luis Figo, but we're going to take to Football Manager 2021 to try and unearth the next Luis Figo from the goldmine of up and coming talent Portugal has to offer, and in turn hopefully stamp the #WeStreamFM seal of approval on the next Luis Figo in world football.
Rewind ⏪
In 1996 a 23-year- old Figo had just recently made the move from Sporting Lisbon to Barcelona after supposed deals with both Juventus and Parma fell through resulting in him receiving a two-year transfer ban which prevented him joining any clubs in Italy. Already capped for Portugal, from here he would go on to achieve footballing greatness linking up with the likes of Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Patrick Kluivert and eventually move on to Real Madrid for a World Record fee of €62m at the time where he would also pick up that famous Ballon d’Or in the year 2000.
Today we're going to be basing our search on a fairly raw Luis Figo during his early days at Barcelona. Championship Manager 2 gave Figo slightly less pace than you'd probably expect but at that time still he still boasted top level dribbling, flair, creativity and technique and this is what we are looking for in today’s generation of Portuguese talent. Let's see what Football Manager 2021 can come up with...
🔍 Dribbling
🔍 Flair
🔍 Technique
🔍 Passing
🔍 Vision
🔍 Portuguese
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This was a tricky choice but based on the attributes you'd commonly associate with Figo, it had to be Barcelona's Francisco Trincão. The Portuguese youngster is only 20 years of age at the start of FM21 and by the time he is 23, I think his attributes could be extremely close to mirroring those of a CM2 Luis Figo. Trincão boasts strong dribbling, technique, passing and vision which fits the type of profile that we are looking for. With the young winger having years ahead of him, exposure to first team football could see him become one of the best wide players on FM21 and can already fit a number of attacking positions across the pitch. It wasn't completely straight forward making Trincão the final choice though. AC Milan forward Rafael Leão possesses a number of quality attributes to rival Trincão and could once again be another player to mirror Figo's attributes. However, with the 21-year-old playing a slightly different position and not excelling in certain attributes, he fell just short of the selection. I mean, I couldn't do this article and not include a Wolves player. Pedro Neto offers a number of top attributes to rival the choice of Francisco Trincão. Wolves' tricky winger has high attributes for dribbling and flair but his end product (including finishing, long shots and passing) is a little bit lower than desired. The final name that was under consideration was Sporting's Pedro Gonçalves. The former Wolves man has had a really impressive campaign for the team Figo started his career with. Although predominately a central attacking midfielder, Pote offers a strong ability on the ball with high technique and vision levels. However, I don't think his ability and potential is that higher level to be dubbed the next Luis Figo and therefore quite matches Francisco Trincão is the player we expect to replicate some of Figo’s success in the very near future.
Let us know if you agree!
Thanks for reading,
Dave.
You can catch Dave live on Twitch where he is currently managing a brand new save at Sporting, while you can also find all of his YouTube content here including his current FM21 Journeyman series.
Interested in writing a Guest Author piece for WeStreamFM or have a football icon you would like to try and replicate? Drop us a DM or feel free to reach out to MaddFM directly.
