Most Wolves fans will probably be surprised to learn that their club’s new signing has a footballing superpower.
In a game increasingly defined by closing down opponents, Wolves have landed a player who is incredibly ‘press-resistant’.
Wolves’ capture of Andre for an initial £18.5million ($24.1m) from Fluminense was surprising for several reasons. For one thing, the centre of midfield was not an area Wolves prioritised at any stage of a summer when financial restrictions hampered their efforts to strengthen elsewhere.
The signing of Andre also represented a coup as Wolves landed one of the most talked-about midfielders in South American football.
“I want the fans to be excited about it,” sporting director Matt Hobbs told Wolves’ website.
“Be really excited, but it’s always important with these players that we give them the opportunity to settle because the Premier League’s such a different league. Wolverhampton is very different to Rio, so we’ve got to give him time to settle socially.”
Andre’s adjustment to the Premier League and Wolves is likely to be significant, given he made his name in a team playing such an extreme style of football.
The 23-year-old was a star performer as Fluminense won the Copa Libertadores for the first time last year under innovative coach Fernando Diniz, whose extreme brand of football has provoked much discussion and analysis.
‘Dinizismo’, as the style has been dubbed, is based on controlling possession but without the positional discipline favoured by top European coaches, led by Pep Guardiola.
It relies instead on overloads, extensive positional rotation and often players massing in a single area of the field to allow short one-twos and interchanges to move the team up the field, in a style compared to refined street football or advanced futsal.
And it hinges on the team’s most technical players being comfortable receiving the ball under pressure — and that is where Andre became pivotal to Diniz’s success.
“Andre acts as the first midfielder and is an excellent reference for starting the game,” Marcello Neves, Fluminense correspondent for Globo, tells The Athletic. “He knows how to escape from aggressive marking and moments of pressing pressure — mostly because he has a good pass, good turns and is good at physical play.
“He hardly loses in ‘hand-to-hand combat’. He also hardly loses confidence during the match, which makes him very consistent. At Fluminense, with Diniz, he played a very similar role to Sergio Busquets at Guardiola’s Barcelona.”
Andre was pressed by opponents more per 90 minutes than almost every midfielder in Brazil’s Serie A last season yet achieved an under-pressure pass completion rate higher than any of his peers. This graph shows him as a clear outlier in the corner of the chart.
A look back at his performances in his final full campaign for Fluminense, who he joined as a teenager, throws up countless examples of Andre taking responsibility in positions where other midfielders might shy away from the ball or play a percentage pass.
In his side’s 4-0 defeat by Manchester City in last December’s Club World Cup final, Andre received a pass close to his own goal, surrounded by City players.
But instead of hooking the ball away to a position of greater safety, he backed his skills and turned out of trouble before finding former Real Madrid full-back Marcelo to help his side build from the back.
Just last week, in Brazil’s 1-0 win over Ecuador in a World Cup qualifier, Andre took the ball in a congested midfield in the 18th minute.
He laid it off to team-mate Bruno Guimaraes before receiving a return pass, again surrounded by players.
And he then produced an audacious backheel for West Ham United’s Lucas Paqueta to penetrate the Ecuador press and get Paqueta in on their opponents’ last line of defence.
Yet a willingness to take the ball in tight spots can be a double-edged sword, and Wolves will doubtless aim to finesse their new signing’s decision-making over when to take the ball and how to use it.
“Perhaps the biggest compliment I gave Andre is also the biggest criticism,” says Neves. “He is very self-confident on the field and sometimes makes mistakes because he trusts himself too much.
“He tries one more dribble, a more difficult pass, and misses a ball that could have been simplified. He stands out for taking many risks, but he also makes mistakes by taking too many risks.
“At Fluminense, he had a scheme that was designed so that he could take risks without any problems.”
Recent matches did throw up examples of Andre’s risk-taking backfiring. For Brazil against Spain in the 77th minute, Andre received a pass when boxed in by opposition players.
Again, he tried to keep possession with a difficult touch and square pass.
He overhit the pass and allowed Nico Williams (Spain’s No 11) to break on goal.
But analysis by smarterscout, a free-to-use advanced analytics website used by professional clubs to break down elements of a footballer’s game into different performance, skill and style metrics, underlines that metronomic passing under pressure is Andre’s overwhelming strength.
Smarterscout gives players’ games a series of ratings from zero and 99 relating to either how often they perform a given stylistic action (for example, volume of shots per touch), or how effective they are at it (for example, how well they progress the ball upfield) compared with others playing in their position.
And Andre’s smarterscout chart, which presents the data in an easy-to-digest form with scores adjusted to reflect Premier League standards for players from all leagues — you can read more about it here — gives a clear picture of Andre’s game.
It is notable in part for his lower ratings. A progressive passing score of 18 out of 99 shows that he doesn’t look to break opposition lines very often per attacking touch, being more likely to link play rather than search for incisive, longer-range through balls.
In a game against Coritiba in Brazil’s Serie A last season, Andre received this pass in central midfield with the option to progress the ball forward into space for a team-mate.
But he chose instead to spin away from an opponent towards his own goal and look to move the ball on to a team-mate in a better position.
He completed a square pass to allow his team to move the ball through a less congested part of the pitch.
Defensively, those low scores for defending intensity and defending impact tell us he rarely presses aggressively or repeatedly commits to challenges in the way his friend and new Wolves team-mate Joao Gomes does.
But an above-average score of 63 for ball recoveries and interceptions shows Andre is adept at anticipating errors and snaffling loose balls.
His real strengths are underlined with scores of 84 or higher for ball retention, link-up play volume and carry and dribble volume.
Essentially, the scores paint a picture of a player who excels in tight spaces, under pressure from opponents, keeping the ball moving with short, effective passes or wriggling away from rival midfielders.
He should help Wolves to play their way more effectively through teams that press high up the field.
With head coach Gary O’Neil already blessed in central midfield with Gomes, captain Mario Lemina, Tommy Doyle and the currently injured Boubacar Traore, Andre will be given time to feel his way into his new challenge.
But Wolves believe he has the skills to become a Premier League star and ultimately move on to bigger things to earn the club a significant profit.
