Celtic winger, Jota, has been in outstanding form for Celtic this season. The Portuguese winger has contributed to the team’s cause with 14 goals and 11 assists as Ange Postecoglou’s team steamrollered the SPFL.
Jota also played an important part in Celtic’s Champions League campaign with his four appearances and two goals in the competition. And who can forget that free kick against Real Madrid in the Bernabeu?
And this has not gone unnoticed by Portugal boss Roberto Martinez as the Spaniard was asked if he was watching the Celtic winger for upcoming Portugal squads.
Martinez said [The Herald], “Absolutely. I think obviously Jota is a player that is very important for the national team in terms of the qualities that he has. He is a player that has this natural knack of beating players in a one vs one situation.
“So, he’s a player that since I arrived in January, as you can imagine, there’s been a lot of information. I tried to follow as many players, in fact, all the players, and clearly, Jota is one of them.
“What I would say is that his evolution has been very impressive. I would say that the last four months especially he is growing into a very mature role at his club. He’s always involved in the big moments, and that’s important.
“The stats that we have from him, they are very impressive, not just in the Scottish league, but in the Champions League. When you’re looking at measuring a player in that natural gift of taking players on it’s very interesting to see it at different levels.
“It’s quite interesting that Jota actually has probably a bigger percentage in the Champions League than what he has in the Premiership, and that’s something that we always follow very closely.
“Then the other aspect is obviously there’s a lot of competition for places in that role, we have players that have been playing big games for their clubs for a long time now.
“But he is very much a player that we appreciate what he can bring to the national team and we appreciate the form he is in.”
The Celtic stats behind Roberto Martinez’s comments
Roberto Martinez’s comments intrigued me. So I decided to have a look at the Champions League data that seems to have impressed him. [UEFA.com]
In Jota’s four appearances in the competition, he completed 16 dribbles. That is averaging four per game. It doesn’t seem a lot but when you consider two of those appearances were against Real Madrid, Jota’s confidence to go head-to-head with some of Europe’s best defenders should be commended.
This is also more than Real’s Luka Modric and Man City’s Phil Foden which is all the more impressive considering both players are still participating in the competition.
And the fact he has found the back of the net against Real Madrid and RB Leipzig in those appearances also seems to have interested Martinez.
Obviously, that is very raw data. Martinez will have a much more comprehensive set of stats to pour over. So whatever additional information the Portugal manager has, it’s clearly impressed.
In other news, Anthony Joseph says ‘a number of clubs’ are monitoring Celtic star
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