PAOK’s prodigy Constantelias is better than you think

PAOK is on the rise. Dikefalos are the best-performing team in Super League, the only one with six wins in their last seven league games, the only defeat being a 1-1 loss to Atromitos in Peristeri.

THE Yannis Konstantelias He now has eight consecutive Super League games as a starter for PAOK. The 19-year-old attacking midfielder made his debut in the defeat to AEK at the Opap Arena and has featured in every competitive position in the PAOK roster since.

How good is Constantelias?

The youngster not only gained Loucheskou’s trust, but also the applause of PAOK fans, who see perhaps the most positive part of this season in his face.

Small, talented, sensible, to provoke the classic questions:

• What is he doing in the field?
• how good is he
• In which areas does it excel and how strongly?

We have the answers. Constantelias has played in 12 games, eight of them as a starter, and has now clocked up 700 minutes of play. The sample isn’t very large, but it’s enough to get initial answers, always through Opta’s data and graphs.

He does that on the pitch

We start with the big picture. Here are Constantias’ ball actions and performances so far in this year’s Super League.

Constantelias has 349 actions with the ball (45 per 90′), most of them on the left. It comes central, it goes deeper, but the important thing is that it already has 35 actions in the opponent’s area, so 4.5 per 90′, a considerable presence for an outside player.

The little one has 88/125 pass in attackwas taken 17 chances for teammates and two of them have become assists. Perhaps the most impressive is the 96 wears.

Performances and numbers that don’t mean anything on their own, but reveal a lot more compared to the rest of the players in the league when we look at them.

To the top movers and shakers in the league

These are the players who have created the most chances per 90 minutes in the Super League so far.

Hames is first with 2.69 chances per 90′, just ahead of Gacinovic. Constantelias is the 5th creator of the mastery with 2.19behind the Aris duo and just ahead of Zivkovic.

The 19-year-old’s creation becomes even more impressive when you focus on the open game. These are the top creators when we take chances from set pieces, corners and fouls.

Živković is first with 2.1, Manu Garcia is 2nd with 2.08 and Konstantelias ranks 3rd after creating 1.81 open game opportunities per 90 minutes.

Constantelias carries the ball…

Let’s move on to the ball carriers, the players with the most per 90′ in this year’s Super League.

Players from smaller teams occupy the top two spots, as Fatiga in Ionikos and Gonzales in Atromitos have the ability to start their races from the bottom.

The impressive Huang and Perez lead the players of the big teams Constantelias is the only representative of PAOK, in 6th place, with 12.3 ball carriers per 90′.

…and he is first in races over 10 meters

But thanks to Opta’s data, we can dig even deeper.

We can focus on forward carries, which are those where the direction is toward the attack and the player’s run with the ball at their feet is more than 10 yards.

Na’tos Constantelias in the first place. The 19-year-old is the player with the most 10-yard transfers and the only one with more than four streaks per 90′.

Impressive package

Constantelias is impressive. Both on the field when you see him play and in the impression his game gives, in the essence he offers to PAOK.

With two months to go before he turns 20, the youngster is running with the ball at his feet, making good moves in attack, creating opportunities for his teammates and entering territory.

He does the easy, he can do the difficult.

The goal will come

He misses the goal, Konstantelias still hasn’t found a goal in the league. These are the endgames and expected goals he has so far.

The little one doesn’t do much, he doesn’t look for his foot often, he has 13 finals, 1.6 per 90′. The good thing is that only four are out of range and in fact only one is at long range.

Constantelias seeks executions in the penalty area, right footed from the left and it’s only a matter of time before he comes more central and finds the net.

He’s not a hunter, he’s not a player who will mainly provide the last shot like Jolis did two years ago. Konstantelias offers a lot in carrying and designing, takes steps with the ball and kicks into space.

The goal will come, but that’s not the point.

Constantelia’s performances in this first run of his career in the starting XI are more than promising and we will of course come back to him below when we have seen more.