Here is a blurb I wrote about Ibrahima Konaté on August 17th:
“I have Konaté down as an x-factor for Real Madrid this season. The reason is simple: There is virtually no doubt that Real Madrid will be leaning on him a lot this season due to Eder Militao’s health and the variance of the entire Real Madrid center-back depth chart. They will live and die with whatever version of Konaté shows up.
“It’s been a very difficult year for the French center-back. He lost his good friend, Diogo Jota, before the season
started, and then his father passed away. Konaté stepped away to take some time. Later, he spoke candidly about the depression he went through.
“The best version of Konaté is physically imposing, a commander of his own box, press-resistant, strong with the ball at his feet, and quick. The best version of Konaté also worked well with Trent Alexander-Arnold at Liverpool. The more recent version of him is a bit more error prone — and a lot of that has to do with his mental battles.“
I think it’s safe to say any concern or skepticism about Konaté has been eviscerated.
There was a stat circulating around the internet this week which was aggregated from Opta: In the past 13 games, the French center-back hasn’t been dribbled past once.
The stat in itself is a bit misleading in that sometimes the reason a defender doesn’t get dribbled past is because either: A) the defender commits a foul to prevent such an action; or B) a defender can virtually go an entire game without an attacker attempting to dribble past them.
But despite that, we can use that viral stat to discuss Konaté’s excellence in general.
Being “dribbled past” is defined by an attacker attempting a take-on, maintaining control of the ball, and successfully moving past the defender. If you look at the average baseline for this data which is aggregated by Opta and StatsBomb, most defenders are dribbled past roughly 0.5 to 0.8 times per 90 minutes. The benchmark for this kind of defensive reliability is Konaté’s former center-back partner, Virgil van Dijk, who famously once went 50 consecutive games without being dribbled past in the 2018-2019 season. Obviously, Konaté probably won’t sustain this to match that streak, but that shouldn’t matter, because up until now, he’s objectively been extremely impressive, regardless of this statistic which is flawed anyway.
A better metric is tackle success rate. Did Konaté go 13 games straight without anyone taking him on, or was he taking the souls of everyone who dared to go at him?
Here’s the impressive truth: Per Fbref, Konaté has engaged in 11 true 1v1 defensive challenges against oncoming dribblers and successfully won the ball back 10 times. That gives him a 90.9% dribblers tackled rate in domestic play. For perspective, William Saliba hovers around 70-75%. Of course, we need to reevaluate the data at the end of the season when we have better sample size. The current data is from a small sample — but it’s worth pointing the quality of his challenges and defensive reads so far this season.
Keep in mind Konaté’s impressive play in this run has come against opposition like Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Real Betis, and Inter Milan. He’s also done this while adjusting to a new league, in a new scheme, with a new center-back partner — all of which you would never be able to tell because Konaté and Dean Huijsen’s partnership is so good, you’d think they’ve been playing together for a decade.
At this rate, Konaté will go down as an A+ signing, and, if he continues like this, he is a complete game-changer for Real Madrid’s defensive ceiling.
