In the last few years, the first choice left-back of the Spain national team has been Jordi Alba, who had a lot of experience for his club and country, but the former Barcelona man also joined Lionel Messi at Inter Miami, maybe Luis de la Fuente had to look for other options in this position.
While some could tip Alejandro Balde, José Gayà, or the likes of Fran García and Alejandro Grimaldo could be good options, Spain also had an exciting option who could be knocking for his first national cap, who was also from La Masia. This player is Juan Miranda from Real Betis.
However, the 23-year-old player was far from a traditional left-back who just goes up and down on the whole flank to provide overlapping runs for his winger.
Instead, he had some intriguing skills to compensate the team. This tactical analysis is a scout report that profiles Miranda’s unique playing style and how he could contribute to his side.
Amazing goalscoring potential
In modern football, the left-back has been given many roles as tactics evolved a lot in the last decade, from Pep Guardiola inverting Fabian Delph into the midfield to Carlo Ancelotti dropping Eduardo Camavinga to this position because the coach valued the skillsets of the players in different phases of plays more.
In Miranda’s case, he is also different from both names we mentioned because he has a good sense of attacking the penalty box that could help the team to create chances.
By raw numbers, Miranda only had three goals from 21 appearances in La Liga 2022/23, it was not a lot, but the viz above gives more explanation for his offensive actions. Firstly, he is good at getting into the goalscoring zone (centre of the penalty box) to take shots or even into the six-yard box.
Secondly, he had 2.21 xG from 21 shots and averaged xG/shot at 0.11; these were impressive numbers if we compared them to other La Liga left-backs.
For example, we could take the first choice Barcelona left-back last season – Jordi Alba, who played 2648 minutes and 30 games in a possession-based team but had one goal fewer than Miranda.
The contrast was also shown in other numbers: Alba only took 14 shots despite playing more, and the sum of the xG is 0.74, only around one-third of Miranda, resulting in xG/shot at 0.05.
These are good reflections of Miranda’s quality to attack the penalty box and get into a good position to take shots.
Very interestingly, we believed Miranda was not a classical full-back. Instead, he might be more similar to Marcos Alonso, who was also playing at Barcelona but had a very different style of play. Miranda should be compared to Alonso at his best season – 2016/17 under Antonio Conte, in which Alonso scored six goals and registered 3.9 xG in the Premier League winning campaign.
His xG/shot at 0.09 is very close to the number Miranda has got (0.11). Alonso had direct free-kick goals outside of the penalty box. At the same time, Miranda did not score on these occasions last season in La Liga.
However, he also scored directly from free-kicks in a friendly with Fiorentina in the 2022 summer, and in 2021 he also had an excellent free-kick goal in a U21 match vs Lithuania; he has the potential to become the next Alonso and similar to his countryman, maybe coaches could try Miranda at wing-back position to get him closer into penalty box, just like Denzel Dumfries at Inter under Simone Inzaghi.
Another critical point to notice is Alonso had similar shooting positions to Miranda. If the Betis left-back could work on his finishing in this area, he could score even more goals.
From here, we entered some game scenarios to demonstrate Miranda’s profile more, starting from how he got into the penalty box to finish an action. Because he was so good at arriving from deep, he could interact with the winger’s position to use the outside channel.
For example, Betis winger Ayoze Pérez moved infield and drew Osasuna right-back Rubén Peña narrow, thus, opening space outside of the last line for Miranda to go for a shot.
Not only at Betis but also at the national team, Spain U21 benefitted from Miranda’s sense of attacking the penalty box or even designing how to attack in the last third, considering his involvement.
From that, they created a team goal vs Romania in the EURO U21 this summer. Santi Denia always allowed his striker – Abel Ruiz — to drift outside and possibly form an overload with his teammates. In this image, Ruiz was moving out to the wide space, but what about the targets inside the penalty zone?
In this case, Spain would put the left-winger, Sergio Gómez, inside or near the penalty spot, and again, the Man City player has drawn the backline narrow by taking the right-back in.
As a result, there were huge spaces outside the last line, and the Romania winger was slightly slow to track Miranda, allowing Miranda to arrive from deep and extend the lead for his country.
Back to the club context, Miranda could be a good fit as the head coach, Manuel Pellegrini, also tended to use false-wingers in his possession phases. When he was coaching Man City, his wingers were Samir Nasri and David Silva, while at Betis, he could play Luiz Henrique from wide, on the left flank; he mostly preferred Peréz or even Sergio Canales in this position, both were not natural wide players to create threat with dribbling on the side, they would roam infield, so the left-back has a lot of space to attack.
Here we could see Juanmi staying centrally when the ball is on the outside, keeping Óscar Mingueza narrow. So it allows Canales to play a direct ball into the penalty box because there were spaces.
Then we can question if Miranda should finish the chance himself instead of cutting back to Juanmi because he was already near the goal. But it was also a problematic occasion as the speed of the pass was so high, and Carles Pérez was tracking back. If he could do it in one touch, he would be Robin van Persie.
Good passing feet in the build-up
Besides arriving into favourable positions in the offensive third to threaten the opponents, Miranda could also contribute in the build-up phase with his good passing range. In this section, we started by understanding his game more with data analysis.
The first scatter plot shows the ball progression of all La Liga left-back last season. There are apparent observations, such as Alba being the best to provide progressive passes in the game. At the same time, the likes of Balde, García, and Alfonso Pedraza were skilled at carrying the ball forward with their explosiveness.
Miranda was different from this type of player. He averaged 1.35 progressive runs/90, which was okay but not impressive. But he has 9.4 progressive passes/90, which shows Miranda is good at helping his team to advance the attack with passes.
The second scatter plot was more about offensive involvement near the penalty box. Regarding deep completions/90 and touches in box/90, Alba was far better than all others as he topped in both metrics.
Miranda was also fascinating as he was the only other player on the top-right of the graph, with 1.58 deep completions/90, more than Camavinga, and 1.69 touches in box/90. It shows that he could be both a provider and a receiver in the penalty area.
Last season, Miranda gave a terrific assist when his team played against Valencia in La Liga. When Betis had the ball in deep, Miranda spotted the position and movement of his winger (Pérez), who was moving behind the last line and exploiting the right-back. Miranda had the skillsets to pick him in this situation.
Despite the considerable distance, Miranda did not ping a high ball which is different control. He was skilled enough to plate a bouncing ball with good speed in front of the runner.
Therefore, Pérez could easily take the ball and finish vs the goalkeeper 1v1 without slowing down to control or adjust. The quality of this pass was outstanding.
When Miranda started in wider positions, he was also very good at finding the inside passing channel and reading the opponent’s actions. In the last example vs Valencia, he played behind the defensive line because there was open space, but this scene vs Osasuna was different.
The opposition right-back, Peña, was already prepared to drop back and protect space behind, but Miranda also realised and didn’t play it behind. Instead, he put an inside ball to Canales in space, and Betis kept going from there.
He can improve on his defending
Despite being very good with the ball, Miranda still had much to work on in his defensive game to become a more developed player, especially in 1v1 situations.
This scatter plot included all defensive duels stats from La Liga full-backs last season. Miranda averaged 6.64 defensive duels/90, which is not bad — it shows that he was not hiding away from the duels.
The success rate of 55.93% needed to have been better, however, and the opponent could knock the ball past him in individual situations.
And we could also see that Miranda struggled a lot when playing against dynamic players, in which his body position got manipulated too easily. He got too nervous, which affected the timing of his challenge, and he tended to misjudge it.
For example, in the EURO U21 final, Cole Palmer had some good moments against Miranda with his change of directions; Miranda was utterly fooled by his fake cross and allowed Palmer to chop to the bottom line.
And it was also the same against the Athletic Club last season when Iñaki Williams had the chance to challenge him in 1v1 situations. Miranda often tried to challenge too early and missed it completely, showing the inside to Williams to cut in or cross.
Conclusion
As shown in this analysis, Miranda could be an exciting player being ready for the national team in the foreseeable future.
In terms of fitting into a positional game, he might not be the best option, but Miranda has his threat to goal when near the opposition penalty box, which could help the team unlock defences.
Of course, he was young, and as we also pointed out, there were things Miranda could improve in his game, but it would be an engaging season to see his competition with Abner at the club level too, under Manuel Pellegrini’s tactics.
