Breaking Down How Juventus' Arturo Vidal Will Fit in at Bayern Munich

It looks increasingly as though Arturo Vidal will join Bayern Munich from Juventus for a fee of around £26 million plus £2 million in add-ons. He is, of course, a very fine midfielder, but he’s not somebody who obviously seems to fit Pep Guardiola's style of play. That raises two possibilities, both intriguing: Firstly, that, given Guardiola has only one year left on his contract, Bayern are already looking to a future without Pep, or that Guardiola is considering modifying his approach.

Guardiola is an arch-tinkerer, so perhaps that’s not so surprising. He’s somebody who can barely leave his team shape alone for five minutes during a game without making an adjustment, his capacity for micromanagement being both a great strength and the reason he can so often look so drained by the process of coaching—and it may be, that level of intensity comes to feel oppressive.

He will have reviewed last season and decided why, despite a third successive Bundesliga title, the season fell a little flat toward the end with defeats in the semi-finals of both the DFB-Pokal and the Champions League.

That said, there’s a danger of spying causation in coincidence. Just because Bayern have moved for Vidal a couple of days after selling Bastian Schweinsteiger to Manchester United doesn’t necessarily mean Vidal is seen as a replacement for the Germany captain.

Matthias Schrader/Associated Press

Yet in terms of the make-up of the squad, the two are clearly linked. It had been widely assumed one of the reasons Schweinsteiger was allowed to leave was that Bayern have a glut of midfielders: Philipp Lahm, Thiago Alcantara, Javi Martinez and Xabi Alonso all play in that same central position. It’s true Xabi Alonso is coming toward the end of his career and that Martinez and Thiago have both had injury problems, but still, that seemed an area in which Bayern were covered.

The other suspicion about Schweinsteiger was that Guardiola didn’t quite fancy him. He had a pass-completion rate of 87.8 per cent last season, figures from WhoScored.com, which one would have thought would have been to Guardiola’s liking, given his focus on possession, but perhaps he lacked the quick feet of Lahm or Thiago (or Xavi or Andres Iniesta).

But does Vidal really have defter feet? His pass-completion rate in Serie A last season was 84.6 per cent, per WhoScored.com, which is perfectly reasonable but offers little clue as to what would make him appeal to Guardiola. He played 49.5 passes per league game as opposed to Schweinsteiger’s 66.1. He is not an obvious fit.

Perhaps the biggest question mark about Vidal is his temperament. He lives perpetually on the edge of a red card, a master at picking up yellow but escaping dismissal.

He was extremely fortunate not to be sent off in the Champions League final after being booked in the 10th minute for one of five fouls he committed that day. And he surely should have been sent off in Chile's Copa America semi-final when, after just five minutes, he shoved the Peru defender Carlos Zambrano in the face.

Perhaps the latter was part of a plan to wind up a notoriously combustible player who, sure enough, was booked soon after and sent off before half-time. Even if that were the case, it was a reckless act that could have had severe consequences.

Jorge Saenz/Associated Press

But Vidal’s aggression, perhaps, is part of it. As well as passing and possession, the other key component of Guardiola’s philosophy is pressing, and Vidal is used to that, both at Juventus and with the Chile national team. He regained possession through tackles and interceptions 4.7 times per game in the league last season (as opposed to 3.1 for Schweinsteiger). It may be that there’s a feeling at Bayern that the team became too nice last season, too focused on keeping the ball and not enough on winning it back.

If they land Vidal, Bayern in this coming season may not be so pretty, but they may have an edge that wasn’t there last year.