James Maddison, the footballer: Impudent flicks, exquisite free-kicks and 'the chop' (2024)

What does James Maddison bring to your team?

Stepovers, receiving on the half-turn, eye-of-the-needle through balls, exquisite free kicks, pinpoint set-piece assists, superb ‘weaker foot’ goals, impudent flicks, long-range shooting, and the chop — he’s always loved the chop.

It’s all there when you scroll through Maddison’s best moments and break down the various parts of his game that contribute to him being, statistically at least, one of the most dangerous attacking midfielders in the Premier League.

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It is also — and this really is wonderful to watch — all there in the brilliant video that a proud father put together of his son, from the age of seven to 17, titled “Madderz: A Decade of Development”, and which shows a slight but supremely talented young boy becoming best friends with a football.

The footage takes you on a journey back in time that goes some way to explaining how a wiry kid from Coventry became one of the most highly-regarded footballers in England.

Aged 26, Maddison will be at the centre of one of the biggest domestic transfers this summer, and when you look closely at his numbers — the numbers that really matter — it makes you wonder why there is not a longer queue of clubs beating a path to Leicester City’s door.

Maddison has scored 30 goals and contributed 24 assists across the past three Premier League seasons. To put those figures into context, only six players — Harry Kane, Mohamed Salah, Son Heung-min, Kevin De Bruyne, Bruno Fernandes and Ollie Watkins — have been directly involved in more goals during that period.

Indeed, in an industry in which clubs are always trying to mitigate risk when weighing up the pros and cons of paying huge transfer fees for players and committing to multi-million pound salary packages, Maddison feels like a sure thing at Premier League level.

In the international game it is different. Maddison has played only three times for England (two of those caps were won in the past four months) and perhaps that is a factor in why, at this stage, it looks like being a fight between only Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United for his services.

Interestingly, one source close to England manager Gareth Southgate, talking on condition of anonymity to protect relationships, believes that the narrative around Maddison’s England career is set to change. Southgate, he says, never gave up on Maddison, even during those years that were spent in the wilderness. “Here to stay” is the expression that the source uses now that Maddison has been named in the past three England squads.

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Southgate insisted that Maddison was overlooked previously because of the quality of players available to him in the same position. Others suspected it might have been to do with off-the-field matters, not helped by the time Maddison was photographed in a casino in 2019, after being excused from England duty the same evening owing to illness.

If there were doubts about Maddison in the past, they tended to be based on the idea that he enjoyed life too much away from the pitch and the perception that he strayed the wrong side of the line when it came to finding a balance between confidence and arrogance. In short, he can be a little bit too full of himself at times.

“People read into too much. He’s nothing like that,” says the same source.

So what is Maddison the footballer like?

Analysing his game in detail is fascinating, not least because so much of what you see now can be traced back to that YouTube video.

Guile, assists and the chop

“One player I’m crazy about for England… James Maddison.

“He’s an authentic footballer — more of a street product than an academy product. He’s daring. He has nerve. A manager can tell him to do A, but if he believes B is the right option, he’ll do B.

“I just love this. Any idea that comes into James Maddison’s head is 100-times better than any idea you will find at any coaching conference.”

That was Juan Lillo, Pep Guardiola’s former Manchester City assistant, writing for The Athletic during the World Cup.

Finding clips to support Lillo’s claims isn’t difficult.

This assist against Newcastle in 2021-22 was Maddison at his best. Drifting into an area between Newcastle’s defence and midfield, Maddison is looking away from the ball, scanning to see what options are around him, before Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall passes to him.

What follows is audacious. Maddison nonchalantly flicks the ball first time with his right foot, taking five Newcastle players out of the game…

… and setting Harvey Barnes free on goal.

Improvisation is a big part of Maddison’s game and makes him so unpredictable, as the next images, from last season’s Premier League game at Southampton, illustrate.

Maddison receives a pass from Tete on the edge of the Southampton area, and it is hard to imagine many players attempting what he does next.

With James Ward-Prowse rushing out to close him down, Maddison takes one touch to control and then stabs and swerves the ball by playing it with the outside of his right foot. The ball bends and fades beautifully…

… into the path of Ricardo Pereira.

How about this pitching wedge pass against Watford?

On the face of it, there is nowhere for Maddison to go as a posse of Watford players converge on him.

Receiving and playing forward

“Before you receive the ball — especially if, like me, you receive it between the lines a lot — you’ve got to know where all the defenders are, what kind of touch to take, whether it’s going to take you forwards with one touch or maybe back if the defender’s covering. It all flashes through your head,” Maddison told The Athletic in 2019.

Maddison’s ability to take the ball on the half-turn frequently, shown in the three images below (this was actually his first touch of the ball in England’s 4-0 victory over Malta on Friday night), owes much to his positioning and awareness of what is around him.

But, crucially, it also holds the key to something Southgate flagged up when he explained why Maddison had been named in his World Cup squad in Qatar.

“I like the fact he finds those pockets of space,” the England coach said. “He turns, he plays forward, and not a lot of players play forward in this day and age.”

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That aspect of Maddison’s play — progressive passing — jumps out in the smarterscout metrics, which show how often a player performs a specific action and how that compares to their positional peers by giving them a rating from zero to 99.

Maddison’s rating for progressive passing (how many passes the player attempts that move his team 10 metres-plus upfield per attacking touch) was 92 in 2021-22. Essentially, that means there is only an eight per cent chance that another player in his position in the Premier League puts up higher numbers than Maddison did for Leicester that season.

Although that figure dropped from 92 to 77 last season, when Leicester were relegated, it is still high and speaks to the point that Southgate was making.

Playing forward is easier said than done, especially high up the pitch. Maddison makes that happen through a combination of scanning, positioning and the quality of his touch.

In the image below, from Leicester’s EFL Cup tie against Liverpool in 2021, Maddison glances over his right shoulder, to check the position of Liverpool’s right-back, as Boubakary Soumare dribbles infield.

Maddison then turns to look the other way and sees Vardy’s position. He is looking while the ball is travelling to him, which studies have shown is the optimum time to scan, as opposed to when the ball is at a team-mate’s feet.

Because Maddison already knows his next pass, he can receive across his body and face the Liverpool goal all in one motion. His second touch of the ball is a pass that slides Vardy through on goal.

But look at his position in the image below — that phrase Southgate used about “pockets of space” couldn’t be more true here. One blue shirt is surrounded by Liverpool players but none are close enough to put pressure on the ball.

It is an art to be able to find that space.

Here is another example, against Legia Warsaw in the Europa League in 2021. Youri Tielemans has the ball at his feet and Maddison is looking over his left shoulder, surveying the scene. Crucially, he has not only found space but also got himself into a position where Tielemans can pilot a ball into his feet.

A lot of players receiving in this situation would choose to “set” the ball for Soumare (shown below) — often because they haven’t, in coaching parlance, checked their shoulder. Indeed, talk to Glenn Hoddle about the Spurs midfield and he’ll tell you how frustrated he gets with Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Oliver Skipp for not doing that nearly enough.

Maddison doesn’t pass back to Soumare because he knows exactly what is behind him: space. He receives on the half-turn and lofts a clever ball over the top of the Legia defence for Patson Daka.

On other occasions, Maddison uses disguise to receive in a way that gets him goal-side of an opponent. Below, Everton’s Dwight McNeil is duped into thinking that Maddison will take the ball with his right foot.

Maddison drops his right shoulder at the last moment, allows the ball to run across him and takes it away with his left.

McNeil is bamboozled and…

… Maddison has gained five yards on the Everton player and cannons a shot off the near upright.

That is one of Maddison’s favourite ways to receive and escape the clutches of opponents — he did it in the lead-up to England’s second goal against Malta.

First, he scans as Declan Rice prepares to receive.

Then Maddison drops that right shoulder again.

Both the Malta players next to him are sucked in…

… and Maddison is out the other side.

Long-distance shooting and the left foot

Maddison loves shooting.

No one in the bottom half of the Premier League had more shots than the 81 that Maddison registered last season.

But it is about more than just shooting.

“He can score goals from distance, which against low-block defences is another attribute that is a little bit different to some of our other players,” said Southgate after naming his World Cup squad.

Maddison has scored some spectacular long-range goals for Leicester, such as the one below against Liverpool in the EFL Cup…

… and this wonder strike in a wild 5-2 win at Manchester City in 2020.

The data underlines Southgate’s point, too.

Below is Maddison’s shot map since he joined Leicester at the start of the 2018-19 season. His missed shots are faded out slightly so we can see where his goals have come from. His average shot distance of 23.9 yards stands out, as does the fact that he has scored 17 times outside the area from open play — only Ward-Prowse (18) has scored more.

Another feature of Maddison’s shooting is the quality of his left foot — something that England’s coaching staff picked up on during the training sessions and small-sided games in Qatar.

In fact, only one midfielder has scored more goals with their weaker foot in the Premier League than Maddison since 2018: De Bruyne.

The left-footed shot below was against Newcastle in 2020 and is arrowed — no swinging here — into the top corner with his laces.

The next one, against Brighton, is expertly swept into the inside side netting after a double step-over creates a yard of space.

Nick Pope, during his Burnley days, has no chance of getting to this perfectly placed left-footed shot from outside the penalty area either.

Set-piece goals and assists

This is unquestionably an area of expertise for Maddison, both in terms of goals and assists.

Maddison has scored some outstanding free kicks for Leicester using disguise, as was the case against Southampton below…

… and placement, as demonstrated in the 4-0 win over Nottingham Forest last season.

With eight goals scored directly from free kicks in the Premier League over the past five years, Maddison ranks second during that period. Ward-Prowse, with 15 goals, is out on his own.

It is a similar story in terms of chance-creation from set pieces, where only Trent Alexander-Arnold (11.3) and Ward-Prowse (16.9) have generated more expected assists than Maddison (11.0).

Maddison’s delivery is excellent and is something else that Southgate has highlighted. This quickly-taken free kick (below) for England against Ukraine in March very nearly delivered a goal for Kane, who could be a team-mate for club and country next season.

Where do you play him?

“No 10!” is the instant response from those who know Maddison best.

The problem with that is — and this is something that Maddison himself identified a few years ago — the No 10 role has been faded out. It is not a position that exists in the 4-3-3 set-up that Southgate favours for England and, although Maddison has played as a No 10 in the Premier League more than in any other position (46 per cent), the reality is that the majority of his Leicester career has been spent in a variety of different attacking roles.

That versatility says much about Maddison’s intelligence as a player — something that anyone who has worked with him for any length of time talks about.

Being deployed wide doesn’t mean staying wide. When Maddison created Leicester’s second goal against Everton towards the end of the season, he was playing as a fluid right-sided attacker, drifting infield and (see below) releasing through balls from the centre of the pitch.

Maddison started on the left for England against Malta, but he was rarely close to the touchline and was instead encouraged to take up more central positions and play between the lines.

Although Maddison had a hand in the second goal and showed some nice touches, he looked a little frustrated at times. Look at when he just failed to bring down this pass from Alexander-Arnold…

Even the chop didn’t quite come off…

The Malta game was billed as a shop window for Maddison, but the reality is that one England match wasn’t going to change how he is viewed. It will be more intriguing to see where he goes next and what position he plays.

There is an argument that Tottenham’s need for Maddison is greater, given the glaring lack of creativity in their midfield. If Spurs set up in a 4-3-3 under their new coach Ange Postecoglou, as anticipated, Maddison could play as an attacking No 8 either side of a pivot (which seems most likely), or even as an inside forward.

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That 4-3-3 formation is Eddie Howe’s default system at Newcastle, too. Two of Joe Willock, Joelinton and Sean Longstaff occupied the twin No 8 roles last season, but — and this feels significant — Bruno Guimaraes, who has been playing as a deeper-lying No 6, is also seen as a No 8 and is expected to play further forward.

Interestingly, those No 8 roles at Newcastle also require a lot of defensive work under Howe and that isn’t Maddison’s forte, even if he has improved in that area.

His defensive figures in the smarterscout data for the past two seasons, highlighted earlier in the article, tell a story. And when the subject of tactical discipline came up in conversation with someone who has worked with Maddison, he quickly mentioned the fact that Brendan Rodgers picked Ayoze Perez over him for the FA Cup final in 2021.

But that was then and this is now. Maddison, according to those close to him, has matured both as a player and a person since (he became a father two months after that FA Cup victory).

Indeed, his response to being left out at Wembley was to deliver a total of 39 goals and assists in the Premier League across the next two seasons — more than every midfielder apart from De Bruyne.

The question now, as Maddison approaches his peak years, is whether he can take his game to another level again.

(Top photo: Eddie Keogh/The FA via Getty Images)