Player Focus: Quintero - Serie A's Loss is Porto's Gain

When Porto sold James Rodriguez to Monaco for €45m in May, fans of the Dragões needn’t have worried. Knowing the club’s general manager, Antero Henrique, they were presumably confident that his network of some 250 scouts around the world would have identified a replacement.

After buying low and selling high, this is their forte. As such one imagines that within Rodriguez’s file there was a subsection entitled Succession Planning containing a list of names. In retrospect it wouldn’t be at all surprising to learn that Juan Fernando Quintero was at the very top of it and had been for some time.

Considering how close Porto’s ear is to the ground in Colombia, but also Central and South America in general, where over recent years they have uncovered Quintero’s compatriots Fredy Guarin, Radamel Falcao, Rodriguez and Jackson Martinez - one can safely assume they were on his trail even before he moved to Europe a year ago to join Pescara.  

Quintero emerged at Envigada and then Atletico Nacional, one of the historic Medellin clubs, for whom Rene Higuita and Andres Escobar used to play. Rather curiously, a fan of theirs wearing the club’s green and white stripes walked past the press area towards the end of Porto’s 3-1 win against Napoli at the Emirates Cup on Sunday. He’d come to see how Quintero was getting on.

The 20-year-old didn’t disappoint. In the 72 minutes he was on the pitch, Quintero gave one of the performances of the tournament. Playing behind fellow summer arrival Nabil Ghilas with the No.10 shirt he inherited from Rodriguez on his back, Quintero was responsible for the few puffs of smoke that spluttered from the Dragões mouth in the first half.

Porto’s liveliest player, he gave Napoli an early warning, hitting a shot from outside the box that, after taking a deflection, had goalkeeper Rafael scrambling across his goal and breathing a sigh of relief as it went wide. Incidentally, Quintero averaged the sixth most shots on target from outside the area per game in Serie A last season, with 0.59.

A variation on this theme came just before the interval, Quintero stood over a free-kick. And as he did so, a sense of anticipation descended on the Emirates. He has already established quite a reputation for himself as a threat from these, as highlighted by a WhoScored characteristic indicating that he is ‘very strong’ when it comes to direct free-kicks.

His only goal for Pescara last season was a free-kick against Bologna, the whip of which left spectators with a crick in their necks. There was another at the Sub-20 tournament in the spring where Quintero scored from 35-yards against hosts Argentina. He also warmed up for the Under-20 World Cup in Turkey this summer by stroking a low one inside France’s far post too.

This effort drifted wide, but even so, Quintero had made enough of an impression to be the topic of many conversations over half-time. Those who hadn’t been talking about him, instead focusing on Goran Pandev who’d given Napoli the lead, scoring on both days at the Emirates Cup, which led the assembled Italian journalists to ask whether signing another striker after Gonzalo Higuain was really necessary, definitely were discussing the young kid from Colombia at full-time.

Soon after the break, Quintero got the Dragões blowing fire. Nipping inside from the right, he evaded the covering Marek Hamsik, spotted Ghilas’ run between Napoli’s centre-back and full-back and threaded a pass through for him to level the scores. Moments later Silvestre Varela was sent on his way by a Quintero back-heel which wasn’t too dissimilar to his memorable assist for Vladimir Weiss in Pescara’s 2-0 win over Parma last winter, only this time the recipient was cynically brought down before he got into the penalty area.

Restraining him was proving difficult for Napoli. Players with a low centre-of-gravity, good balance and close control are so hard to keep hold of and Quintero is one of them. As he goes past an opponent, others are drawn to him, which can be fatal because by doing so, they leave his teammates in space. Quintero has the vision to find them.

During Pescara’s game against Sampdoria last September, he was captured on camera at the precise moment he slipped Mervan Celik through on goal. As Quintero did so, he was surrounded by defenders a little like Maradona was when Argentina played Belgium in 1986, and Iniesta too in Spain’s encounter with Italy during the group stages at Euro 2012.  

Of Serie A players to begin last season under the age of 23, Quintero was the eighth most successful dribbler [making 2.06 per game] last season, the fourth most successful passer in the final third [12.88 per game] and the third most accurate [80.2%] in that sense.  

“We all know that one of [Quintero’s] strongest points is this final ball,” Porto coach Paulo Fonseca said after Sunday’s game. He was “an important element”, the catalyst of their second half reaction. While Fonseca was keen to point out that it wasn’t just about Quintero - “all the players played really well” - he was the one who grabbed the headlines.  

“Colombian magic inspires Porto comeback,” was how Monday’s edition of O Jogo saw it. The signs are certainly most encouraging and, as his international teammates will attest - Quintero, remember, was called up to the senior Colombia squad by Jose Pekerman for a World Cup qualifier against Paraguay last October - there probably isn’t a better place for his development than the Estádio do Dragão. The bearing Porto’s burgeoning reputation as a second home for talented Colombians had on his decision to join the club is likely to have been substantial.

“It’s another step forward in my career,” Quintero said shortly after completing his move. The cost to Porto was €5m for 50% of his rights. Included within the terms of his contract is a €40m buy-out clause. It’s a wonder really that they didn’t face greater competition for his signature after his performances at the Under-20 World Cup.

Genoa were close and it’s been claimed that, as was once the case with Kevin-Prince Boateng, low on liquidity Milan were acting behind them. The same goes for Inter. For a time, they appeared in pole position. Quintero had spoken of his “almost daily relationship” with Ivan Cordoba, the club’s team manager, and his admiration for Guarin. Alas, nothing came of it.

It’s their loss and, as is nearly always the case these days, very much Porto’s gain.