Everyone was looking for Martins and he paved the way to the big double

Olympiacos achieved a very big victory in Toumba. The red and whites won 3-2 against PAOK for the 11th matchday of the Stoiximan Super League, putting on an excellent performance with many distinguished players.

The victory of the red and white came with the apotheosis of the Mendi-ball. Direct play, without much traffic, high pressure when necessary, while Olympiacos also took advantage of the second balls.

A useful “tool” in Jose Luis Mendiliber’s way of playing was Gelson Martins. We will explain exactly how, but first let’s look at the transfer network and the average activity area of ​​Piraeus players.

With no.10 is Martins, who moved up and to the left of the pitch. As you can see from the thick white lines, the Portuguese winger cooperated to a great extent with his teammates.

The shape is such that it seems that everyone was looking for Martins. This is exactly what happened. He took the ball from a total of 11 of his teammates and with great frequency.

For example, Carmo (16) gave him the ball six times, while another as many times he took the ball from Pirola (5), who was playing on his side. No Olympiakos player fed a teammate so much in the game.

In fact, it was a frequent sight, especially in the first half, that the ball from the center of the defense went straight to Martins on the left, who was opposing Otto.

Whenever he did not manage to get the possession, then there were several times another Olympiakos player to recover it. Martins was somehow the “target” in the immediate game of the red and whites.

He repaid them with top performance

So everyone was looking for Gelson Martins and he paid them back with a top performance. The Portuguese winger was the one who found El Kaabi in the 50th minute for the red and whites to make it 2-0, while in the 69th minute he was the winner against Kotarski for 3-1.

In fact, he was involved in the first goal as well, as Tsiquinio took the ball from his own feet, who in turn found Kostoula for 1-0. In the Opta/Stats Perform chart you can see his top performances in the game as well as his actions.

Gelson Martins had a total 52 actions with the ballsecond top performance among Olympiakos players. He plowed down the left side, tried to converge several times to execute or distribute the ball, while also playing on the right a few times.

He had extra four actions in the opponent’s areaalso among the best performances of the players of the red and whites. Only the amazing Babis Kostoulas had more (7). In total he made three finals of value 0.38xGwith one of them ending up in the net.

In addition, completelywith 14 of 20 transfers of, however the four of them made it to the finals. Thus, he was the leading creator of Olympiakos.

Gelson Martins is feeling good. He declared it himself after the end of the game and proves that healthy he can play a key role in the mechanism of the Spanish coach.