La Fabrica’s talents #1: Sergio Arribas
First episode of my new chronicle: La Fábrica’s talents, which will consist in presenting Real Madrid’s academy young players with an in-depth analysis of the player: his qualities, his weaknesses, his playing style and his future evolution within the academy.
Player profile
Born in Madrid, Sergio Arribas start his career in 2007 at Pérez Galdós. He will stay 3 seasons there before joining Leganés. In 2012, Sergio Arribas joined La Fábrica from Leganés. He joined the U12 team (Alevín A) in his first season and his progression has been linear, playing better season after season. Arribas has evolved and matured a lot as a player, he is having more and more impact on his team’s play at the moment. His statistics have also evolved over the years.
Álvaro Benito (ex Real Madrid player and ex coach in Lá Fabrica — where he coached Arribas) about Arribas: «He’s a number 10, an attacking midfielder who plays on the inside, very smart. He is very well positioned, he knows how to take advantage of his fine left foot and he is quite technical. He associates well and in spite of his height he cheats because he has very good aerial play. He’s very good in front of the goal, he has always scored many goals. He has a lot of intuition to occupy the tip zones, the rejection zones. He is a boy with a lot of personality, daring, not at all inhibited. In the right context, he can progress very well in professional football in teams that match his qualities».
Dani Poyatos - Arribas’s coach with Juvenil A last season on Marca about him : «what called our attention the most was the capacity of interpretation in the field, when we proposed something as coaches, Arribas had a very fast assimilation to the concept. He is a very precise player, you could tell he was very skilful, with that low centre of gravity that can remind you of the Isco or that type of player. And on a football level, being more of a midfielder than a finisher, he showed a precision that attracted a lot of attention, without being the centre forward. He understands second moves, second actions, very well. He is very intuitive, in what action or what second move there will be. And he is very precise, in dribbling, he carries the ball very well hooked, in completion… I saw him as a good midfielder, a good passer, who generates advantages in the last third… but he also finished the moves he made. He is one of the players who have surprised me the most during my time at Real Madrid».
Playing style
Sergio Arribas (1,73 M) is a midfielder with a beautiful left foot, who has a very good technical quality. He is a versatile player who can play in several positions on the field: central midfielder, attacking midfielder, winger and even as a support striker — His best position is as an right central midfielder in a 4–3–3 in a role where he has freedom on the pitch and is close to the attacking area, which allows him to put his qualities to good use. He is a technical and creative player with good vision and good passing skills: his close ball control and first touches allow him to eliminate his opponents. He is also able to get past the defenders by dribbling and percussion: he is agile, has good coordination, good pace and a great ball driving. He is a player who resists very well to the opponent’s pressing and it is very difficult to take him the ball back once it is thrown — this is the reason why he suffers a lot of fouls.
His intelligence and his positional sense give him an advantage over his opponents — he sees everything before everyone else and he already knows what he has to do before he receives the ball. He is able to break the opponent’s pressure lines with ease through very precise passes. He likes to position himself and receive the ball between the opponent’s midfield and the defensive line — a place where he can turn around, can run with the ball and make accurate progressive passes for his teammates or make individual runs to get to the goal and score.
Arribas moves around a lot on the pitch and doesn’t hesitate to go down to the lower ground to organise his team’s play and combine with his teammates . He’s often positioned in the right half-space of the field to combine with his winger and right back to create superiority and create a shift. ⤵️
He can also play as a right-winger and come inside to combine with his teammates and then create an offset on the opposite side. ⤵️
He has a good cross and set-piece quality, which makes him a dangerous player in this area — he has scored a few of them last season with Juvenil A. Its medium-long distance shot is also good. Finally, he’s a player with a good finish and a good sense of goal — he was Juvenil A’s top scorer last season with 18 goals scored in 34 games.
Since the 2013–14 season, he has scored a total of 85 goals in 170 matches in the different categories of La Fábrica. When he was playing with the U18s (Juvenil B) in the 2017–18 season and that he was only 16, Zidane called him to take part in training with the professional group — so the French coach had already been able to watch the young midfielder during a session.
In the final phase of the Uefa Youth League, he was impressive and put in a string of great performances that enabled Real Madrid to win the UYL for the first time of history. In the Round of 16 against Juventus he scored a goal; In the quarter-final against Inter, he made 2 assists and in the final he was the one who triggered the first goal of the match by making an excellent cross for Pablo Rodríguez. Arribas has had an excellent season with Juvenil A (best player of the season for me) and has been a major player in the excellent season the team has had. He had been chosen by coaches and captains as the best player in Group 5 of Division de Honor (group in which Real Madrid U19 played) and he was also part of the best XI of the UEFA Youth League after being key in achieving this, for the first time in Real Madrid’s history.
His performances during this final phase allowed him to be included in the list of the Canteranos who trained with the first team. After several training sessions with Zidane, he is one of the players who still continues to train with the professional group and he even made his debut in the Real Madrid training match against Getafe and scored a goal. Arribas surely impressed Zidane in training and this allowed him to be part of the group of players called up for Real Madrid’s first game of the season in LaLiga.
He made his official debut with Real Madrid against Real Sociedad and he became the first Spanish player born in the 20th century and trained at La Fábrica, to make his official debut with the first team [stats by ADN BLANCO]. He therefore made his debut with the first team in an official game before making his debut with Castilla — This has not happened since 2011 and the last player to do so was Fernando Pacheco in 2011 in the Copa Del Rey against Ponferradina. On his debut (against Real Sociedad) even if it was short, we saw on his first touch that he had a good technical quality and that he’s a different player. He has also made his champions league debut’s with Real Madrid against Borussia M’Gladbach in a night which he will never forget.
Arribas on his UCL debut’s : «an unforgettable day and a dream come true. Debut in champions league with Real Madrid Madrid».
Nevertheless, he can still improve in a few areas — notably to be even more present in the game (he has a tendency to disappear at times), his physical resistance — even if he does very well thanks to his ball handling and acceleration — and his last pass.
Projection and future
Zidane knows how to recognize talented players and seems to see in Sergio Arribas a player with great potential who could one day make part of the first team. This season he’s one of the bests players of Raúl’s team. He had already shown in the preseason how much he will bring to Raúl’s team and he also showed it at the beginning of this season. He has scored 2 goals and delivered 3 assists in 8 games so far. When Arribas is in a great day and you can find him, Castilla is immediately better. And conversely, when he doesn’t appear too much, the team struggles.
Arribas is one of those players who are able to change a game and be decisive at any time — whether it’s through passing, a touch of the ball, dribbling, scoring… He is a player who is also very intelligent and always behaves remarkably, something that is appreciated at Real Madrid. If all goes well for him, he will be part of the Real Madrid squad one day — he has the potential to do so, we’ll see how he progresses.
His stats in Real Madrid academy since 2013:
2013–14 (RM U13): 4 goals in 16 games
2014–15 (RM U14): 7 goals in 14 games
2015–16 (RM U15): 10 goals in 21 games
2016–17 (RM U16): 11 goals in 23 games
2017–19 (RM U18): 11 goals in 25 games + 22 goals in 30 games -> 33 goals in 55 games
2019–20 (RM U19): 18 goals in 34 games
2020–21 (Castilla) : 2 goals and 3 assists in 8 games
Web sites used: https://as.com/ https://www.marca.com/ https://www.realmadrid.com/ https://www.adnblanco.com/
