Achraf Hakimi: End to Carvajal dominance?

Achraf Hakimi is set to return to Real Madrid after this season as his loan deal with Borussia Dortmund expires. Hakimi’s agent hinted that there’s no interest from top clubs and the Moroccan is keen on returning to his parent club.

“There is no such offer [from Inter], we will return to Madrid at the end of the season,” Alejandro Camano told Assahifa. “Achraf will be the best player of the world at his position.”

The 21-year-old has been the headline maker in Bundesliga for the past two seasons and has been one of the best players at Dortmund. With Hakimi and Odriozola returning to Bernabeau at the end of the season and Carvajal being fit, who will be the starter for Los Blancos in the coming years? Carvajal spent one season at Leverkusen and made Madrid use his buy-back clause.  Will history repeat itself? Another right-back impressing on loan in Bundesliga and coming back to Bernabeau in top form.

There’s no doubt about Carvajal being the best right-back in the world when he is in top form. So it’s very likely to replace him with a player who had an identical journey as the Spaniard. Hakimi has been a revelation for Dortmund in the past two seasons. Although he struggled against Bayern in BVB’s 1-0 loss at Westfalenstadion, he has generally been impressive for Dortmund. This season he has 15 goal contributions (5 goals & 10 assists) for BVB in the Bundesliga. He has also scored four times in the Champions League this season. What’s more impressive is that he has done it as a right-back.

Achraf is a modern full-back that offers versatility on the wings. He is fast & agile and has good dribbling ability. His final product is also impressive, which is visible by the numbers he put up every season. His playing style is somewhat similar to Trent and Dani Alves. The Moroccan has played as an inverted left-back several time for BVB. He has the experience of playing in various positions on the wings – left-back, right-back, right-wing back, left-wing back, right-winger, left-winger, you name it. In modern times, the importance of full-backs has increased as they are no more restricted to defending and are allowed to go forward and contribute to the attack.

Hakimi’s emergence has led to Real Madrid and Zidane in a difficult situation. Zidane will have three right-backs at the start of next season – Dani Carvajal, Achraf Hakimi, and Alvaro Odriozola. Carvajal has been excellent for Los Blancos and it’ll be hard for Zidane to start any other player over the Spaniard. So, there’s a high chance that Hakimi will end up as a deputy to Carvajal. But in the past few years, Carvajal has been heavily overworked and Hakimi could rest him for important fixtures.

But here the problem arises. Hakimi is too good to be a backup. Let’s compare Hakimi and Carvajal’s numbers. A comparison between both in regards to the eight metrics of goals, assists, aerials won, dribbling, key passes, pass success, long balls and tackling, this season so far. This is based on their 2019-20 league performance.

Goals scored: In terms of scoring, Hakimi is an outright winner. The Moroccan has scored 5 goals as compared to the Spaniard’s 1.

Assists: Hakimi is way ahead in terms of assists too as he has bagged 10 assists so far as compared to Carvajal’s 5.

Aerial ability: In terms of aerial ability, Hakimi wins 0.4 aerials per game as compared to Carvajal’s 1.3 aerials per game.

Dribbles: In terms of dribbling, Hakimi dribbles a lot more than Carvajal. Hakimi averages 2.3 dribbles per game as compared to Carvajal’s 0.8 dribbles per game.

Key Passes: In terms of key passes, Carvajal (1.7) has more key passes per game than Hakimi (1.1).

Pass success: Carvajal has a slightly better passing accuracy as the Spaniard has 86.5% pass success rate as compared to Hakimi’s 84.6%.

Long balls: in terms of long balls, Carvajal attempts to send players through to goal a lot more often than Hakimi and also has better efficiency. Carvajal averages 3.2 long balls per game as compared to Hakimi’s 2.

Tackles: In terms of tackles, Carvajal attempts to win the ball more often than the Moroccan. Carvajal has 2.3 tackles per game as compared to Hakimi’s 1.9 tackles per game.

So in conclusion, we don’t have an outright winner here. Hakimi is a much much better attacker that Carvajal as he has more goals, assists and dribbles than the Spaniard. Carvajal, on the other hand, is better defensively. With Real Madrid having a world-class defensive full-back in Mendy, Zidane could really use Hakimi ahead of Carvajal to support the right-winger. This makes Hakimi more suitable to Zidane’s lineup than Carvajal. However, if Zidane wants to use Marcelo on the left flank. he can use Carvajal as the defensive full-back. This would offer Zidane a lot of choices. That’s what Hakimi will do, offer choices to the French manager.