Scouting Report: Gabriel Veron
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There’s nothing like a Copa Libertadores final to get people pretending that they give a fuck about South American club soccer - personally, my favorite part was people being “surprised” at the quality of play…. You’ve seen Brazil play before, right? They’re pretty good….
Anyway, one of the players that got some attention from the winning side, Palmeiras, and a guy who has been getting some hobby love recently is Gabriel Veron.
Now, I don’t follow South American soccer too closely and don’t really pretend to. However, I’d heard of Veron and had seen him in some junior international tournaments. But for this, I had to do a lot of research and watch bulk game tape.
In this article, I’ll go over Gabriel Veron as a prospect and see how he stacks up.
Gabriel Veron Scouting Report
Gabriel Veron came onto the scene by winning the golden ball at the U-17 World Cup in 2019.
He is a right-footed player that’s comfortable on either flank, and as you can see from his career heat map, he’s likely to play on a wing/wide attacker.
Minutes
The first thing we’re looking at is minutes. Basically, the more minutes you play for better teams at a young age, the better it is.
So, let’s look at his minutes for 2020 in all competitions.
As you can see, the minutes aren’t too over the top. For context, his 952 Serie A minutes in 2020 is outside the top fifteen for teenagers.
That’s obviously not ideal.
Granted Palmeiras are one of the top teams in the country, and getting minutes there is harder than a lot of other sides in the league.
All in all, it’s good to see Veron getting consistent minutes, but I’d like to see him get more in the future.
Feel
Feel is always tricky to judge - and with Veron’s small sample size, it’s even harder.
There’s two elements of Veron’s game that I have really liked when looking at his game tape:
Off-ball movement
Tenacity
Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s still a few “why would you do that” moments that are common in young players - but what Veron shows on the attacking end is good to see.
Take this play for example. He hits a simple sideways pass and instantly runs into the gap.
Once he’s halfway into his movement, he does a quick scan and sees that he’s not being followed, and turns of the afterburners, hitting that space on the opposite flank.
Veron speeds up his run, receives the pass and opens up a potential one-on-one in the box.
The play itself unfortunately ended up without much firepower to it - Veron tried some dumb backheel and kinda messed it up, but I think that play is a great example of both the quality off-ball-movement combined with the odd facepalm moment.
Gabriel Veron’s off-ball movement also comes into things when we look at his shooting later on.
Ball Progression
When you look at Gabriel Veron’s ball progression numbers, you can see he’s far more of a progressive runner than he is a progressive passer.
That isn’t to say that Veron doesn’t pass - however, he’s far more likely to get involved with smaller link-up passes than he is to hit big progressive passes up field.
Actually, that off-ball movement example we looked at earlier is perfect - he started the play with a short sideways pass, and ended the play with the ball in the box (on the end of a progressive pass).
As someone that plays wide, it isn’t really Veron’s job to hit longer progressive passes, especially when he’s the type you’d want at the end. However, you’d like to see his progressive run completion rate to be a little higher. Losing the ball after 55% of progressive runs could be improved.
Defending
Defending isn’t Veron’s strong suit. I’ve noticed his defensive positioning to be decent at times while watching him play, but it isn’t anything crazy at this stage.
His recoveries in the final third is about average in the Brazilian league, and that’s about as good as his numbers get.
However, a lot of the time, I’ve seen Veron come onto the match as a substitute - when that’s the case, there can often be the instruction to focus more on attacking.
Creation
Gabriel Veron creates in a few different ways.
However, I think his best asses as a chance creator is his ability to run at players and create one-on-ones.
You can see that in the way he gets the ball into the penalty box - there’s a lot of carries and running at players.
Veron’s mix of pace, and confidence with his run just makes shit happen. And I’m here for it!
Veron’s ability to run at players and get into dangerous areas means that he’s likely to get potential shot-assists in good areas. He averages 0.14 shot assists per match, with an xA of 0.19 - meaning that the shots he’s creating are really good ones - mostly this comes from cut-backs inside the box, or balls across the face of goal.
Finishing
I touched on Veron’s off-ball movement before and that pays dividends when we look at his finishing and goalscoring.
The most impressive thing to look at is his xG bucket distribution. A single shot xG of about 0.10 is what I’d consider to be an ‘average’ shot in soccer. You can see, the vast majority of his shots are coming from incredibly high xG areas.
This shows when you look at his shot numbers along with his overall xG numbers.
And that’s backed up when we look at his shot chart.
Just check out how many great shots he’s getting!
Combine that with his effort, confidence and technique - I think he could be a great goal scoring winger in the future.
Verdict
With all that in mind, here’s the verdict on Veron’s ability as I see it now.
Keep in mind, this is based off what I’ve seen to date, and is subject to change on getting more minutes or a move to a bigger club.
You can read more about my scouting rubric here.
Gabriel Veron for Collectors
Gabriel Veron is a hot prospect, and has been a bit of a talking point in the hobby.
He doesn’t have too much out there in regards to cards and stickers, and what he does have is mostly Brazilian. However, there is a sticker of him winning the U-17 Golden Boot award.
In relation to making a move to a larger club - His most recent estimated value is 25m, but I can’t really see him moving anywhere this offseason. I think Palmeiras will want to hold onto him for another year - especially in an offseason where clubs might not have the large sums of cash to throw around that they usually do.
I can’t see Veron moving straight to England unless it’s to a bigger club as a bench piece/move for the future like Gabriel Jesus’ move to City (although with new transfer laws, I do think more South American players will move to the Premier League straight from the bigger South American leagues)
However, I can certainly see him in Spain or Portugal to start his career in Europe.
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