Palasios was the ultimate creator of Panathinaikos with Levadeiakos

Panathinaikos finished third in the Super League after beating Levadeaikos 1-0 at Leoforos. Goalscorer for the Kleeblatt team was Benjamin Verbic, his first in green, but one of Ivan Jovanovic’s top players was undoubtedly Sebastian Palacios.

The Argentinian midfielder was Panathinaikos’ best player in the last third of the field, creating several chances for his team-mates that unfortunately didn’t convert into a goal.

What is certain is that he is showing himself to be in good form ahead of the Matchday 4 game against AEK and making promises of a good performance in the Athens derby where the Shamrocks will be more reliant on protagonists due to the importance of the game.

Almost in the same vein as Sporar

Palasios (34) moved quite high on the pitch, as we can see in the chart of the Opta Stats / Perform Panathinaikos transfer network. The Argentine midfielder was almost level with Sporar (9) and higher than Verbic (77), with whom he played in the same position but on the opposite flank. Despite moving high up the field, he managed to combine with several of his teammates and even successfully.

At the same time, he converged more towards the axis, but the movements at Kotsiras (27′) were almost in one line, with the Greek full-back moving slightly behind midfield and only slightly towards the touchline.

The graphic above shows the Serbian trefoil technician’s 4-3-3 trick with Aitor on the axis. The Spanish midfielder played as a center midfielder but slightly higher than Kourbelis and Cerin.

Jovanovic gave him a freer role than the other two to be able to help as number ten. Of course, Tserin and Kourbelis almost “crack” in the center area, which is not entirely positive for Panathinaikos’ game.

Enter as much territory as Sporar

Palacios had most of the action with the ball at his feet from the offensive linemen. Overall it had 47 actionsof which the six were in Markovic’s range, equal to Sporar, with both of them performing best in this statistic.

As we can see in the graphic below, most of the actions were carried out from the right wing, mainly in the levadeaikos half, while the same goes for the actions in the opponent’s area, which were mainly carried out from the right. The Argentine midfielder barely deviated from his natural position, which (as well as Jovanovic) ‘founded’ him in his overall picture with Levadeiakos.

Despite being high up the field, he was excellent at blocking. He had Won 6/7 duels. He won three of them three successful duels (100% success), more than any of his teammates and four recoveries Possession. The only ones who had more than the Argentine were Kotsiras and Brignoli (both had five recoveries).

“Feed” his teammates with record performances

As mentioned above, where Palasios stood out was in the creation part. The Argentine midfielder shared overall 32 passes24 of which were successful (75% success rate).

He totally had 25 passes in attack (16 successful, 68% win rate), more than any other teammate, with Aitor being second with 18 assists. The Argentine midfielder’s 25 assists was the second-best performance for the season as Kotsiras had 28 in the debut with Ionikos.

However, Palacios ended the game with five key passes, i.e. five transfers that made it to the final. All were mainly from the right and none of them were from standard executions as if they could have a better number from there either. Only behind him were Kourbelis and Tserin with two key passes.

Palacios’ five assists is a record achievement for the current season as no one has tracked that number in these ‘stats’.

Palacios’ performance can only satisfy Ivan Jovanovic knowing he has in his quiver a player who can create and execute who is also in excellent form ahead of the Athens derby with AEK. Given Palacios deserves a starting position in this game and Jovanovic puts heavily on (and) him, obviously waiting for Bernard to be integrated.