Hints of Philipp Lahm in PSG's Full-Back Prodigy Alec Georgen
In football, trade-offs are very frequently made. Be it from a business standpoint, a tactical standpoint or a personnel standpoint, prioritising one direction or avenue delivers a hammer blow to another.
For Paris Saint-Germain in the modern era, their trade-off has been at the expense of youth. Although the club take homegrown products extremely seriously, the Nasser Al-Khelaifi era has seen money pumped relentlessly into the coffers, allowing the purchase of world-class names. A byproduct of this is that up until now, no youth player could force their way into the setup.
For a long while, the only one who stood a chance was Adrien Rabiot—a player inconveniently dogged by transfer speculation away from the club.
Several saw their stars fade, with 2013 under-20 FIFA World Cup star Jean-Christophe Bahebeck perhaps the poster boy of this time. Mamadou Sakho was sold off years ago, and Blaise Matuidi—the only one to have stuck—seemed to potentially be heading for the exit this past summer, causing alarm.
But this season a change has occurred; perhaps thanks to forced circumstances, perhaps not. Presnel Kimpembe has used David Luiz’s sale and Marquinhos’ presence at the Olympics to cement a place in the team, and another breakthrough might well be round the corner.
Alec Georgen, who only recently turned 18, has been turning heads at youth level and featured for PSG in three International Champions Cup games over the summer.
With Serge Aurier consistently falling foul of off-field issues, Gregory van der Wiel released and only Thomas Meunier—a modest solution considering the ambitions of the club—secure in the right-back position, Georgen’s time to step up may come more quickly than many thought likely.
Overlap, overlap, overlap
PSG’s youth team are pretty formidable—there are plenty of superb young players in it that could well make an impact for the seniors in the future—and as a result, they tend to dominate games. They see a lot of the ball, and it allows them to spring their players into good positions.
Georgen has emerged as a key cog in attack despite playing from right-back; they’re always looking to move the ball onto his flank and get him involved. He’s very clever with his positioning, holding his run until it’s time to burst and then shooting forward and overlapping to give his team an extra element in attack.
This overlap is the tactical hallmark of his game. He does it whenever he can, knowing that stretching the pitch horizontally is key to giving his team-mates more room to utilise. Whether he receives the pass on the outside or not, it attracts a marker and often opens up the inside lane for his winger to utilise. The timing of the run is important, and he rarely strays offside—even when his colleague delays the pass.
Crossing prowess
Crossing is something of a dying art in modern football, with few wingers and full-backs able to reliably measure a ball into the box. The list of excellent crossers is limited to the likes of Alex Sandro and Marc Albrighton, and some players who are perceived to be good at it—like Dani Alves—are actually quite poor by historical standards.
Georgen’s deliveries, then, can be seen as a breath of fresh air. He takes his time when lining his crosses up and, more often than not, lifts in a beauty. In PSG’s recent UEFA Youth League tussle with Arsenal, he created five chances using crosses and fizzed in two more low ones that caused outright panic in the box.
During PSG’s ICC victory over Inter Milan in the summer, we were treated to a beauty of a ball in by Georgen that was promptly headed home by Aurier. We’ve also seen throughout the UEFA Youth League matches PSG’s under-19s have played, corners are often played short and back to Georgen so he can deliver from a deeper position. It seems as though, if given the choice, no one else is allowed to swing it in.
He has every cross in the book: looping to the far post for a knock back; curled in; flat, so it can be headed home with the slightest of directional changes; and low, firm and ready to instigate chaos. It’s all well and good a full-back being freed up on the overlap so often, but they have to do something with the ball; Georgen combines great runs and attacking instincts with tangible end-product.
Intelligence
When you watch Georgen operate, particularly in his own half and the middle third, you may be reminded of Bayern Munich’s Philipp Lahm. It’s high praise—Lahm has been the best full-back in football for a long time—but it’s justified.
It’s rare you watch a player and can feel so safe in the knowledge that he won’t make a poor decision; Georgen is an incredibly intelligent footballer, uses the ball extremely well and rarely (if ever) gifts the opposition a chance due to an error.
When receiving the ball in the middle third, he’s equally comfortable doing one of three things: taking on his marker and beating him, playing it back inside for a one-two and bursting forward to receive the return or lifting an accurate channel pass in for the winger to take into space.
He’s never predictable; he doesn’t do the same thing over and over. Built on intelligence rather than power and directness, he is in some ways the anti-Aurier—who is bullishly brilliant, relying on physical prowess to make the difference at times.
Defensive testing
Due to PSG under-19s' dominance, Georgen doesn’t often get tested defensively. Even against the best academies in Europe, such as Arsenal’s, they control proceedings with ease and rarely endure sustained periods of pressure.
It makes him difficult to assess defensively, though he has flashed aggression and a willingness to mark tightly. In particular, Georgen makes a point of allowing no time to a man receiving a throw-in, marking tightly and trying to poke the ball away with a hopeful toe.
Le Havre spoke with PSG this past summer about taking him on loan, per RMC Sport’s Mohamed Bouhafsi (h/t ESPN FC's Jonathan Johnson), and the fact the move never materialised is disappointing. It would have allowed Georgen to escape the comfortable confines of PSG’s incredible youth setup and add layers to his game.
That said, PSG’s senior team may offer a route to success sooner rather than later, and Georgen’s blend of intelligent play and impactful crossing would win him fans quickly. Those who got a taste for his play at the ICC lust for more, and it wouldn’t surprise to see the young Frenchman take to first-team football like a duck to water.
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