Rangers View: Barisic performance for Croatia illustrates different side of his game
Any and every Rangers fan on the planet would tell you in a heartbeat that Borna Barisic is a class act.
The left-back has established himself as a key member of Steven Gerrard’s starting XI over the past 12 months, and with three assists and a goal in six Scottish Premiership outings this term, it’s clear that he plans on having another stellar campaign at Ibrox.
And if we needed any reminder of his talent, we need only look at his display for Croatia against Portugal over the weekend.
The 27-year-old may have been on the wrong end of a 4-1 defeat, but he could hold his head up high after putting in a very impressive display against Joao Felix, Bernardo Silva, Bruno Fernandes and co.
Incredibly, despite the scoreline and the quality of the opposition, Barisic’s pass completion rate of 86% was 4.5% higher than his season average, as per Wyscout.
Similarly, he made five interceptions, 1.24 more than usual, and had an aerial duel win rate of 100%.
This was a different sort of performance from Barisic.
As his pass map shows, the full-back was pinned back a lot more than he would ordinarily be for Rangers.
As a point of comparison, Barisic had exactly the same pass completion percentage against Kilmarnock recently, but the graphic above shows that he had a lot more chances to push on and take the game to the opposition.
Still, Barisic was brilliantly solid against Portugal.
Those four successful aerial duels were a perfect exemplification of that point.
Barisic usually averages 1.53 aerial duels per game, and tends to win just 63.6% of those.
In fact, Barisic hasn’t won more than four aerial duels since February 29th, when Rangers were unceremoniously dumped out of the Scottish Cup by Hearts.
Likewise, Barisic equalled his highest total of interceptions for the season so far with a very respectable five.
Crucially, three of these came in his own penalty area.
If we compare those five to the five he made against St. Johnstone, we can clearly see how much further up the field he is affecting the game at domestic level.
Obviously, having a player of his considerable attacking talents as far up the field as possible is preferable, but if this display for his country tells us anything, it’s that Barisic is a much handier defender than his outings for Rangers allow him to illustrate.
In other Rangers news, Alex McLeish claims Steven Gerrard is ‘massive draw’ for Gers in transfer market.