Scouting Report: Joao Felix - Worth The Hype?

In this scouting report, I’m going to look at someone I’m sure you’ve heard of. Atletico Madrid’s Joao Felix was one of the most expensive players of all time while being a teenager, and has been touted as one of the best young players in Europe for a while.

So, looking at his highlights, we can see he’s pretty impressive. Let’s be honest… anyone can look good in a highlight reel.

Is he worth the hype?

In this article, I’m going to give a bit of a deep-dive into Joao Felix’s underlying numbers along with some match analysis and find out.

Player Profile

Name: Joao Felix
Nationality: Portugal
Age: 20
Club: Atletico Madrid
Rookie Season: Rookie cards are from 2018-19

About Joao Felix

Joao Felix came to Atletico Madrid with a lot of hype. And for good reason too… In 26 matches (21 starts), he scored 15 goals and seven assists. Which is pretty outstanding for anyone, let alone a teenager in his debut season.

With that prolific scoring rate, Felix signed a seven-year contract with Spanish club Atletico Madrid for a transfer fee of €126 million.

Since then, his first year at the club was seen by many somewhere between ‘trying to find his feet’ and ‘a flat out disappointment’ - but more on that later. In the 20/21 season though, Felix has started in great form.

Positionally, Felix is best as a second striker but can play anywhere up front. His career heat map shows that he’s been used plenty of places in the attacking third, mainly attacking from the left or right side. Even as a CF, he seems to spend a lot of time collecting the ball out wide.

Here’s that career heat map.

However, this season he has done most of his damage on the left-hand-side, which you can see by looking at his 2020/21 heat map below.

Felix is a right-footer, so collecting the ball on the left opens his body up to either cut inside, or play a ball into the center or through the opponent’s backline.

When looking at his advanced numbers, I like to check this wagon-wheel out. Basically, the closer the blue blob is to the outside of the circle, the better the player is at the accompanying stat.

Basically, looking at this briefly, I can see that Joao Felix has:

• High shot count

• A lot of key passes per 90 minutes played

• A high passing percentage

• A low number of assists per 90

• Can be wasteful in front of goal, with a lot shot-on-target percentage, along with a poor goal conversion rate

And to be honest, that’s pretty truthful. He does make a lot of smart passes. Take this one for example. It may not look like much, but how many times do you see a play like this and the person with the ball either carries too long, or tries to pass up the middle to the striker…

The ball was perfectly weighted too, beating defenders, while still giving his teammate enough space to work with. Whilst nothing came from the chance, I do like that Joao Felix is making these reads.

When it comes to these ‘smart passes’ (a creative and penetrative pass that attempts to break the opposition's defensive lines to gain a significant advantage in attack), Felix attempts 2.83 a game this season, which is top 15 for players in the top five European leagues.

And even more impressive than that is his completion percentage, which is sitting at over 60%, good for top five in the best European leagues.

As you can imagine, a player who likes to play those smart balls in can find a good through ball.

He’s only averaged 1.44 through balls throughout his career, which is good, but nowhere near great. However, he can hit some wicked ones when the opportunity arises.

This pass is just nasty…

Felix is also handy with the ball at his feet too. Granted, his dribble is very, very strong and he has some great 1-vs-1 moments during a game. In a recent win against Granada, this goal was the memorable 1-vs-1 moment. He put the defender on skates and turned a 3/4 chance into a goal.

And, to be fair… that’s a great goal.

However, I actually love this from the same match.

He absolutely rolled the defender there, and showed poise to hit the right pass straight afterwards. So often players will lose that ball after doing all the work to beat their man with the first touch.

I touched on Felix’s shooting earlier, and while he is goal scoring form this season - his shot-on-goal percentage is pretty poor, and with that, his goal conversion is off too.

However it hasn’t always been like that. In his first season at Benfica, his shot-on-goal percentage (SoT%) was 40%, which is awesome. However, since then, he’s been hovering at around 25%

Is the 40% a fluke? I hope not.

For context, here are the leaders for SoT% for this season in the top Euro leagues.

So, yep… 28% isn’t really going to cut it. Even if the leaders here are more along the lines of main strikers, compared to the position Felix plays.

Still, I’d like him to edge closer to the 40% number as opposed to the 25%.

And I think I know why. Here’s Joao Felix’s shot chart throughout his career.

As you can see, a lot of the shots are somewhat central which is nice… Sure, I’d like a couple of those shots on the left inside the box to be closer to the center, but that’s being picky.

But here’s my real problem with this chart…

That is a whole lot of shots from poor xG positions. I get testing the keeper from far out, but still.

That eye-test looking at the chart is backed up by his xG bucket distribution. As you can see, pretty much all of his shots are under 0.3 xG, and a massive amount are under 0.1xG.

There’s times that he settles for a long-shot, when there’s other options. Fixing that would go a long way to helping his underlying numbers.

Along with that, Felix is pretty poor defensively (although, I hope more time under Diego Simeone can help with that), and needs a lot of work in the air.

However, they aren’t really calling cards to his game anyway…

Joao Felix copped a lot of flack in the 19/20 season for underperforming given his transfer fee. However, his 9.73 expected goals + assists (xGA), puts him in the top five for players twenty years old and younger.

There’s certain things you can’t control, like a good pass that the striker misses - but there’s a lot of potential with those numbers.

Now he seems more settled in at Atletico, he looks like he’s settling for long shots less, and is playing with a lot more comfort.

What’s Next For Joao Felix

For Joao Felix, he needs to keep his early-season form running. He’s turning it all around after a bit of a slow start.

But seriously, he’s very impressive.

I was a bit underwhelmed when he first moved to Atletico and wasn’t really too sure how he’d fit. But honestly, I’m coming around to it being best for him. He’s under a great manager, and playing in a team that isn’t made to suit his style - which, at 20 is a good thing. He’s going to get some versatility playing at Atletico compared to going to another club.

He has every chance in the world to be a special player, and Atletico Madrid should continue to play Champions League for a while going forward. I’m sure the club are looking at Felix as the guy who can lead them going forward. And let’s be honest here…. Madrid and Barca are not the clubs they were a few years ago, so Joao Felix can really make a name for himself as a top player, and not just a top youngster.

This was the first time I’d really taken a deep-dive on just Joao Felix (usually just watching him in games), and I was very impressed.

Joao Felix for Collectors

Felix’s rookie year was the 18/19 season at Benfica, where he does have some rookie stickers from the Portuguese league. Those are Panini-made, and there are also some Topps cards from the Champions League that year.

Because of the whole card vs sticker thing, a lot of people gravitate towards the card - but both are great. The card does have a higher value at the moment though.

I’ve also seen some 2015 stickers on eBay, but don’t particularly know the set that they’re from, so I’m staying away - although, I’m happy to be wrong on that one.

Regardless, his 2018/19 products are by far the best choice for Joao Felix rookies.

There’s also a bunch of cool Select stuff from the Euro 2020 set, and the Chronicles set last season.