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Kurt Zouma of Saint-Etienne celebrates with team mates after scoring the first goal for the team during their French Ligue 1 soccer match against Olympique Lyon in Lyon
When Tottenham Hotspur allowed Steven Caulker to join Cardiff City for £8 million, eyebrows raised. After all, he was young, English, and had great potential. Replacement signing Vlad Chiriches has looked bright in his appearances, but questions can still be asked about the club’s centre-back position.
Michael Dawson has done very well since being restored to the side after almost being sold last summer, but he turns 30 next month. Younes Kaboul, 27, is a talented defender, but is injury-prone. He missed pretty much the whole of last season through injury and is already struggling for fitness this campaign.
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Only Jan Vertonghen and Chiriches can be considered steady, long-term options for Andre Villas-Boas. With that in consideration, bringing in a young defender to act as reliable cover as well as a long-term replacement for Dawson isn’t the worst idea. St. Etienne’s Kurt Zouma, 19, is an option worth considering.
The France youth international, who turned 19 earlier this month, signed a contract extension through to 2017 at his club back in February, but that hasn’t stopped the big clubs from showing an interest in him. Since debuting as a 16-year-old back in 2011, he has gone from strength to strength. France manager Didier Deschamps hailed the player as a future national team captain and handed him his first senior call-up during the last international break. Surely, then, Spurs would be getting one of the world’s best young defenders.
Standing at 1.87 metres, he would bring great height to their backline and subsequent aerial dominance. He won an impressive 81% of his headed duels last season and that figure has gone up slightly to 80% so far this season. His ability in the air makes him a threat at set-pieces. In fact, the two goals he scored last season were headers from those situations.
Spurs scored just eight goals from indirect set pieces last season and are one of four teams to fail to score from such a situation so far this season. The fact that they won just 46% of their headed duels last season, the league’s third-lowest proportion, and an even lower 45% so far this season, the league’s joint second-lowest, explains why this is the case. Zouma’s presence would help their cause going forward.
Spurs did make the highest amount of clearances last season, however (1,660). They also ranked fourth for interceptions made (721). So far this season, they are ranked 17th for clearances (142) and 11th for interceptions (118). These are two areas in which Zouma does well, particularly the former.
He is hardly involved in tackles, attempting an average of only 0.6 per game last season and a slightly higher but still low average of 1.1 so far this season. He instead likes to stay on his feet as long as he can so he can either push up to cut out passes or clear his lines, not standing on ceremony when danger presents itself. He made averages of 7.2 clearances and two interceptions per game last season. So far this season, he is averaging 10.2 and 1.2 respectively.
On the ball he is generally very tidy, completing 86% of his passes last season and 85% so far this season, which would endear him to Villas-Boas given his emphasis on possession football and his liking for ball-playing centre-back’s. Dawson and Vertonghen are generally neat on the ball too, with completion percentages of 84 and 84 respectively last season and 84 and 85 respectively so far this season. But long ball completion percentages of 62 and 64.3 respectively last season and 63 and 54.9 so far this season don’t make particularly good reading.
Zouma himself isn’t outstanding in this area either, but is marginally better than the Spurs duo, with a completion percentage of 68.5 last season and 65.7 so far this campaign. Chiriches attempted a high total of 18 long passes on his first league start versus Aston Villa last weekend, completing 83.3% of them. Hopefully, he keeps up that level of efficiency when trying to play out from the back. If he does, then Zouma could follow his lead.
There is room for some improvement, but there is certainly enough about the young Frenchman to suggest that he could turn out to be a top class defender as well as fit into what Villas-Boas is trying to do at White Hart Lane. The club’s future in an attacking sense is secured for the long-term, but the same can’t be said about the defence. Signing Zouma would take care of that.
