5 fastest footballers in recent years
5 fastest footballers in recent years, football is all about fun and entertainment. It is also seen as one of the things that brings people together.
Football becomes more Interesting and fascinating when competition and rivalry comes in.
Teams that plays fast football games in the pitch tends to draw more attention to viewers and supporters due to their pattern of play.
But teams cannot play fast games without players being fast at their game. It takes agile and fast players to produce a football team that plays a fast game.
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In recent years some players has become a topic of interest and a topic of discussion. Footballer who has improved and has been impressive in the world of football due to how fast they play in the game.
Pace is at an all-time high in terms of importance on the pitch. With all the talk of philosophies, controlling the ball, making NFL-like designed plays, the factor of speed increased in importance, not decreased.
Sure, few backlines are now as disorganized for the speedsters to wreak havoc in back-and-forths between boxes, but speed is king regardless.
So there is a massive correlation between the fastest football players in the world and the best football players in the world.
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It’s one thing to be fast, a second thing to utilize that on the football pitch and make it one of your greatest strengths. That’s who we are looking at, the best of the fastest.
Let’s look at some players that has this pace and plays fast football.
Kyle walker (Manchester city & England) full back:
No man in football is probably more prideful about the speed of his stride than Kyle Walker.
While he has grown into a fully developed, well-rounded defender, it’s still safe to say that pace is his main weapon.
Pep Guardiola could rely on the Englishman to annul the threat of Vinicius in the matches against Real Madrid and hence could dictate the flow of the game he wanted. Few defenders could’ve achieved that.
While some players could defeat Walker on shorter distances, no one can hold up to him on the length of half a pitch.
Well, maybe Hakimi. But at the age of 33, Walker’s speed didn’t abandon him and he recorded a sprint of 37.31 km/h during one match of the 2022/2023 season!
Achraf Hakimi (PSG & Morocco) wing-back:
Not only does Achraf Hakimi have a lot of fast-twitch muscles, but he also has quite long legs, making him a world-class sprinter.
Who happens to be a great footballer, as well. Paris Saint-Germain made quite the coup when they captured Hakimi on a massive deal, as he is not the only PSG player on this list.
Making The Saints arguably the biggest speed threat in the game of football overall.
Even though he is a wing-back, the 25-year-old Achraf has made a nearly equal number of touches in the middle third of the pitch, compared to the attacking, last third of the pitch.
Far greater than the number of his touches in the defensive zone. His overall career take-on success rate stands high at 52.3%, with him having a weaker 2022/2023 season in that regard that brought on the average.
Kylian Mbappe (PSG & France) Forward:
Probably the fastest football player in the world. Kylian Mbappe’s speed is so high that it even made problems for himself.
The PSG star needed to learn how to deaccelerate when he ventures into the box, because his conversion rate was lower when he rushed in at full rate.
Even though he might be considered the king of take-ons in modern football, the reality is that his success percentage rate is slightly lower than the club teammate Hakimi, standing at 51%.
However, Mbappe is doing it quite more, having attempted to beat his man 1,272 times in his career. Interestingly, he also had a bad last season when it comes to that stat point.
Either way, when Kylian Mbappe turns to face the goal, the defence and the whole terraces of fans are in panic as speed remains the young stars biggest weapon.
Erling Haaland (Manchester city & Norway) forward:
Showing someone the photo and the height of Erling Haaland five years ago, before his boom, telling them this 194 centimetres tall player would be one of the fastest men in football would raise eyebrows.
Yet it’s undeniable at this point. Even though he is regarded as a box-dweller and a poacher, Erling Haaland’s stratospheric rise at Borussia Dortmund was boosted by his viral sprints at the terrified Bundesliga backlines.
But it is true that Erling doesn’t run as much with the ball at his feet, he only has 197 take-ons attempted, finishing 50.8% of them.
Yet he is a nightmare to deal with when it comes to his off-the-ball movement in part because of his speed.
The Norweigan 23-year-old’s long legs don’t have issues with both producing power for sprints, as well as staying balanced whilst wrestling with defenders in stride.
Due to his pace and fast playing football, he was able to bag up to 50 goals in all competitions last season.
Vinicius Jr. (Real Madrid & Brazil) winger:
Vinicius is only 23 but has already faced adversity in his career, when even his colleagues mocked them.
He was regarded as nothing more than a speed merchant by his fiercest critics. Yet the Brazilian has turned his trajectory around and has shown that pace is just one of the tools in his toolbox.
Even though he is younger than Mbappe by two years, Vinicius has already a similar number of take-ons attempted, at 1,116! With a lower success rate though, at 44.6%, proving his weaker start at Real Madrid.
Still, Vini’s speed and its usefulness are undeniable, as teams often have to make tactical adjustments in order to compete with the threat that the winger is speed-wise. The next entry knows a thing or two about it.
The above are some players we can talk about for now. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no other player which can match them.
We have the likes of Leroy Sane who plays as winger for Bayern Munich and Germany, Rafael Leao who plays for AC Milan and Portugal as a winger and also the likes of Alphonso Davies who plays as full back for Bayern Munich and Canada.
These are players that can manipulate and disorganize their opponent’s defense line with their pace and fast football.
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