Sergio Canales

Date of Birth: - 16 February 1991



Height: - 5 ft 9 in



Position: - Attacking Midfielder



Nationality: - Spanish



Current Club: - Valencia



Club Statistics

Racing Santander:

2008/2009 season: 8 appearances, 0 goals and 1 assists. 2009/2010 season: 31 appearances, 7 goals and 5 assists.



Real Madrid: 2010/2011 season: 15 appearances, 0 goals and 1 assists

Valencia (loan): 2011/2012 season: 15 appearances, 1 goal and 2 assists

TOTAL - 69 appearances, 8 goals and 9 assists.

Comments:

Too begin with, I will start by saying it was generally hard to find clips of Canales hence the reason why it’s been a long time since my last player profile on Javier Pastore. I would also like to say this profile may not show the true qualities of Canales due to only playing 30 games in 2 seasons, Canales has suffered many injuries in the recent past and it certainly hasn’t helped his growth, in fact he suffered an injury in April that will mean he will be out until November/December. It was only 26 days before he suffered his last cruciate Ligament Rupture.



Forgetting the many injuries he has suffered, Canales is not a bad player, far from it his vision along with his intelligence on the ball makes him a very good player to watch at only 21 years old. At 21 years old you could also say he’s a very cool and composed player as I said his intelligence on the ball enables him to make space for himself and pick out passes for his team mates.

Another aspect of his game that I touched on earlier is his positioning, he always seems to be in space no matter what part of the pitch, whether it’s an escape route when his team are on the defence or if he needs to make that clinical pass for a team mate to score, this is what I mean by saying his intelligence on the pitch makes him very hard to man mark as he is always seeming to find away to get into the little pockets of space.



One thing that Canales lacks is his execution, it's no good finding space if you don’t know how to penetrate the opposition his vision his clearly there, he can most definitely spot a pass but his problem is executing that pass he either seems to put too much power or too little however at times he would pull of one of these passes and I must say it does make you wonder how he actually managed to make a pass like that? His execution in finishing also needs work as an attacking midfielder 8 goals in 69 games is simply not good enough (nor is 9 assists) however at Racing he was seeming to score more goals so it could be due to the way the manager likes to play him.



His physicality as with most attacking mid players is also an issue because he does seem to get brushed of the ball pretty easy and one hard tackle on the player would shake him up and would most likely end up in a poor game for the player this also brings me onto my next point; the fact he’s quite weak seems to hinder his performances on the big stage where matches are generally tougher his inexperience and age also adds to this.



Canales has now joined Valencia permanently and to be honest think its good business for 11.5 million Euros even though Real Madrid added a buy back clause. At Real Madrid he wasn’t going to play many games with Oezil and quite possibly Modric in front of him, He will certainly need to mature a bit more and know when the right time is too pass and shoot etc but that comes with time and with probably another solid 10 years of his career he is sure to be a very good player, this is unless he becomes "the man made of crystal" and gets injured every season.



Summary of Canales:

Strengths: Vision, Acceleration, composure able to find space very well and his intelligence on the pitch

Weaknesses: Injury prone Physical Presence, inexperience and his execution



If this makes it onto the site thank you for reading... criticism and opinions are welcome :P

Ruben