Micah Richards and Gary Neville praise West Ham United star Lucas Paqueta for World Cup performances
Gary Neville and Micah Richards have admitted to being mightily impressed with West Ham star Lucas Paqueta for his performances with Brazil at the World Cup.
Paqueta has started three of Brazil’s four games so far in the tournament, only being left out of their final group game with Cameroon after they had already qualified.
He scored the fourth goal in their 4-0 last 16 win over South Korea to set up a quarter-final clash with Croatia on Friday (9 December), and while predicting the rest of the tournament for Sky Bet (8 December), both Richards and Neville admitted they liked him.
“Paqueta has been class by the way,” Richards said, before Neville followed up with, “I like Paqueta”.
He is expected to start once again in the quarter-final clash, with all of Neville, Richards and Roy Keane predicting the Brazilians to be successful and lift the trophy at the end of the tournament.
Quality
When David Moyes is willing to spend big to bring you to his club, you know there is a talented player there and that is what West Ham are seeing.
So far Paqueta hasn’t quite his the heights that many expected him to, but his role in the Brazil team is different to how he has been playing for West Ham, occupying a slightly deeper position and being allowed to burst forward rather than starting as a number ten.
It’s allowed his quality to shine through and his performances to have improved, and it’s certainly something that Moyes has to consider doing too to get the best from him in the second half of the season.
He’s been one of the standout central midfielders in the tournament alongside the likes of Declan Rice, Jude Bellingham and Aurelien Tchouameni and it’s great to see that despite not being one of the biggest names in the Brazil squad he’s still getting his props.