Since the start of last term, Zubimendi has completed 86% of his passes in La Liga, with an average of 51 attempts per 90. In a comparison among defensive and central midfielders in this period, it’s enough to put Zubimendi in the upper-right quadrant – the sweet spot of players who are both above-average in their activity as a passer and in their efficiency in doing so.
The 23-year-old has always been a tidy mover of the ball. That much was clear from his first season. And quite frankly, it’s no surprise for a player who has made it this this far having developed at Zubieta, where his coach in the B team was Xabi Alonso – the man who Zubimendi credits for his understanding of building play from the back. With the passing of the seasons, this education has been thrust against the realities of football at the top level, with lessons learned along the way but reinforced on the other side.
All of which leads us to the present version of Zubimendi: a player moulded in a specific technical form by a thorough education, who has now lived through and understands what it means to apply it in the most competitive scenarios.
After a century of games, he now plays with a composure that isn’t hurried by difficult periods of matches or the quality of opposition. It’s the combination of technical and mental skills to know that the most basic pass might be the best one in the moment, or even, deciding that a movement that doesn’t present him as a receiver of a pass might be more beneficial to the team’s possession. It’s the things that Vicente del Bosque previously referred to – the almost undetectable acts that the pivote leaves on a game.
For Zubimendi, whose trajectory as a player has been ascendant for three consecutive seasons, his next impending development will revolve around the variety of his passing. At the moment, he falls into the ‘sensible’ category rather than ‘determining’ as a distributor, although perhaps that’s tied to the reality of the position. What is clear, however, is that there’s some room for growth in his passing responsibilities – the type that could take him up a further level yet.
In typically attentive fashion, Zubimendi is aware of it and already in the process of diversifying his intentions. Since 2019-20, his first season with notable minutes, the percentage of his passes that are played forward has climbed in each of his four campaigns in La Liga. In the current season, over a third of Zubimendi’s passes are now being played forward (35%); the highest rate of any defensive or central midfielder with at least 500 minutes played.
