Player of the Season Nominees: Isco

With the season having ended, Sportskeeda decided to let its viewers rate the 30 best players of the season.

We will be shortlisting 30 of the best performers this term, and let you pick your winner.

What do you think? Have your say at the end of the article.

September 18, 2012.

A young Spanish boy stepped on to the lush green pitch at La Rosaleda for his and his club’s first taste of Champions League football. Three minutes in, with a quick turn of pace, he skipped past a couple of defenders and curled a beautiful shot in off the far post. 73 minutes later, he received the ball from the left, and showing great agility in adjusting his feet in the blink of an eye, rifled the ball into the top corner from the edge of the box. 14 more minutes, and a man left the field having stolen the show in Malaga’s 3-0 demolition of Zenit St. Petersburg.

Francisco Román Alarcón Suárez, more popularly known as Isco, is at the age of 21, one of the brightest young prospects in world football. In fact, according to leading European journalists, he is the best young player in Europe.

He was the recipient of the prestigious Golden Boy Award this season. The award is presented by the Italian newspaper Tuttosport to Europe’s best U-21 player, as judged by a panel of 30 journalists working for the most influential European publications. Isco was the proud winner beating off competition from AC Milan‘s Stephan El Sharaawy and Athletico Madrid’s Thibaut Courtois (on loan from Chelsea). He joins the likes of Messi, Rooney, Aguero and Gotze as past winners and the immense success enjoyed by his predecessors is surely a promising sign of things to come.

The most promising sign, though, has been Isco’s rapid rise to the upper echelons of Spanish football. Having only made his debut for Spain’s national team in a friendly against Uruguay in February, he was the subject of a transfer battle between Manchester City and Real Madrid this summer, a testament to the impact he has had this season. The lure of Los Blancos ultimately proved too much and Isco completed a reported €30 million move to the Santiago Bernebeu on the back of a brilliant season for Malaga.

The current breed of Spanish playmakers – Fabregas, Xavi, Silva, Mata, Cazorla, Thiago – is undoubtedly the best in the world. They have formed the core of a Spanish national team that has won everything and has frequently been touted as the best ever. Each and every one of these diminutive playmakers display outstanding passing prowess and are the main men at their respective clubs. They are creative, imaginative, extremely technical and can instantly pick apart any defence with their eye of the needle passes.

The most frightening thing about Isco, though, is that in addition to the above mentioned qualities, he has the ability to beat not just one but many men. He has the ability to skip past challenges at pace, embark on incredible solo runs and at the end, pick out a teammate with a delightful through ball or curl the ball into the top corner. In this sense, he has frequently been compared to Iniesta, the playmaker who has perhaps had the biggest impact of them all, for club and country.

Isco, who idolizes the Brazilian master Ronaldinho, is a player who likes to receive the ball into feet rather than running onto it. Shown the slightest slivers of space, he runs at defenders with pace and has the skill and trickery to make the best look ordinary. He is prone to the occasional bout of showboating and the flicks and tricks that come with it, but the degree to which they are successful shows that he has great awareness of his and other’s positions on the field.

Season Review

While 12 goals in 42 games is not a very impressive statistic, it masks Isco’s impact. He has proven this season to have a love of the big stage, an ability to outclass the best in the country and in Europe. He opened the scoring in the 3-2 victory over Real Madrid. Interestingly, that match could be considered to be the death rattle for Jose Mourinho’s Madrid stint, as it was the first game in which he dropped club captain and icon Iker Casillas to the bench.

His affinity towards the big stage is exemplified in his Champions League performances. Overall in the 2012-13 season, he averages 2.2 dribbles a game, but in the Champions League this figure goes up to 3.3. In 10 Champions League games he has three goals and six assists to his name and a further three goals in four appearances in U-21 European Championships held this summer.

He was one of the star performers in the victorious Spanish U21 team, having an astounding 4.8 successful dribbles and 3.8 key passes a game. Coupled with a 90% pass accuracy, this made him a feared proposition for any team and was more than enough to gain him entry into the Team of the Tournament.

These statistics only serve to build his reputation as a man for the major tournaments – a pre-requisite for sporting success and a quality that separates the good from the great.

It is fitting that as the financial expansion at Malaga hit the rocks, and some of their bigger names left in search of greener pastures, it was a young Spanish boy who propelled the Los Boquerones to the next level and in doing so shone as one of the leading lights in Europe.