skill India

named to the All-Star team since 2005 when Michael Parkhurst was selected during his rookie
season.Yedlin was ranked 3rd among MLS players under the age of 24 in 2013, according to
MLSSoccer.comAfter success for club and breaking out at the 2014 FIFA World Cup, it was
announced on August 13, 2014 that Yedlin had been transferred to Premier League club
Tottenham Hotspur, signing a four-year contract with the club.
On October 3, 2015, Yedlin started his first Premier League game against West Ham United.
[10/15, 22:27] SKILL INDIA: Yunus Musah
Yunus Dimoara Musah (born November 29, 2002) is an American professional soccer player
who plays as a midfielder for La Liga club Valencia and the United States national team.Born in
the United States to Ghanaian parents, he grew up mostly in Italy and England. He was a youth
international for England before committing to the United States in 2021.Musah was born in
New York City while his Ghanaian mother was on vacation in the United States.Yunus Musah is
a player who’s both immensely talented and undeniably difficult to categorise. He is a bundle of
interesting traits and skills and can do whatever you ask him to do. That’s why the single most
important variable in how he develops as a footballer is what you ask him to do.
It is no surprise then that at Valencia, a club in search of their own identity, have failed to
maximise the young midfielder’s talent.
Musah might lay claim to the most diverse background in professional football. Born in New
York to Ghanaian parents, he moved to Italy where he started his football career as a child
before moving to England, playing for Arsenal alongside Folarin Balogun. His now USMNT
teammate had a breakout season with Reims in Ligue 1 this season, scoring 21 goals.
From London, Musah set off for Valencia, breaking into their team as a 17-year-old. But he’s still
waiting for his breakout campaign.
The diversity in his game is rooted in the environments he has learned in, and that’s been on full
display during three seasons in Valencia’s first team. Couple his footballing education with his
outstanding physical traits and you have one of the most exciting – if not confusing – midfielders
in Europe.
Musah is 20 now and has three seasons of top-flight football under his belt, plus a World Cup, at
which he starred for the US Men’s National Team. Premier League clubs have enquired about
his availability and it looks like he is ready to make the move.
The path towards progression for a teenage midfielder is often beset with obstacles at the best
of times, but the turmoil at Valencia doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to linear development
either. As stated, a motley crew of Valencia managers have used Musah in search of the same
end using very different means.
Valencia had the youngest average starting XI in Europe’s top five leagues last season, but to
suggest there’s structure to their philosophy is not true. The approach is often scattershot and
born from necessity and not some underlying belief in youth development. Their managerial
selection in recent years underlines the lack of a coherent plan by the higher-ups.
Valencia have gone through six managers in three years since Musah broke into the first team
under Javi Gracia. Voro, the interim coach perpetually waiting in the wings, took the reins twice
and Musah only played under him for 239 minutes in total in La Liga, so for the sake of this
analysis, we will only include the four he has worked under for a significant amount of time. He
has played over 1,000 minutes under each of Gracia, José Bordalás and Gennaro Gattuso, and
724 minutes with Rubén Baraja in charge at the end of this season.
His statistics with each manager are instructive of what he has been asked to do. For example,
with Gattuso on the sideline, he touched the ball 52.5 times per 90 in 1,176 minutes. That
number never exceeded 44.1 under the other three managers.Despite the turmoil on the
sideline, Musah is the 11th-most used player over the last three years with 4,914 minutes and is
the second-most used midfielder after Carlos Soler. The managers he’s had can clearly see the
importance of having him on the field but each of them have seen him as the solution to different
problems.
Baraja, who took over with Valencia in dire straits after Gattuso was given his marching orders
in January, hasn’t played Musah in his best position, preferring to utilise him on the wing to take
advantage of his willingness and capacity to cover lots of ground quickly – something that
entirely misses the point of Musah.The former Valencia and Spain midfielder, Baraja, recently
renewed with the club and that might explain why Musah’s name has been linked with a move
away from the east coast of Spain this summer.
To Baraja’s credit, he arrived with the club staring relegation in the eye and implemented a
defensive system with five at the back. He brought through a couple of youth players in an effort
to revitalise Valencia’s season and focused mainly on defensive solidity.
The one manager who seemed to get Musah and have a vision for him beyond being a runner
was Gattuso, but he’s a distant memory at the Mestalla now. Gattuso came in with a clear vision
and a fun, attractive style of play. Musah was certainly seeing an uptick in his usage in important
parts of the field under the Italian.“Gattuso wants to see me touching the ball more, and he
gives us clear ideas to be able to play,” Musah said after a few weeks working with the former
Napoli coach. He deployed Musah and Nicolás González as number 8s in a 4-3-3 with Hugo
Guillamón sitting behind them. Guillamón, a centre-back turned defensive midfielder, handled
most of the defensive work with Musah joining him when out of possession to make a double
pivot. This gave Musah license to play a box-to-box role with the kind of nuances that set him
apart.
Musah saw career highs in touches, total carries (14.2), long progressive carries (4.8), passes in
his own half (12.9), passes into the final third (4.5) and successful passes in the opposition half
(19.4) under Gattuso.