The Ibou Effect: A deeper look at Konate's consummate debut season at Liverpool

That £36m fee is already looking like an incredible bargain.

Such was the horrific manner in which supporters were treated outside the Stade de France both before and after the Champions League final in Paris, followed by the scandalous lies told by UEFA and the French authorities to demonise innocent people while cowardly attempting to absolve themselves of blame for the situation they caused, that the finer details of the match itself now feel like a distant haze. As much as it stung at the time, the result itself paled into relative insignificance given the grim context that surrounded it. 

It was a contest largely defined by a combination of Thibaut Courtois’ brilliance, Liverpool not being able to convert their dominance into a meaningful advantage on the scoreline, and Real Madrid’s unparalleled knack of producing a killer blow despite being on the back foot for most of the game – just as they did repeatedly throughout the tournament. 

Various expected goals models had Liverpool as by far the most likely winners based on the volume and quality of chances they created, but as soon as Vinicius Junior scored in the 59th minute, the final outcome felt strangely inevitable. Liverpool still managed to get themselves into several excellent positions, but they had the look of a team running on empty after a physically and mentally exhausting 63-game campaign. 

Courtois was rightly lavished with praise for his man-of-the-match display, but besides the Real Madrid goalkeeper, there was another standout player on the night whose performance went somewhat under the radar by virtue of the fact he was on the losing team. Had Liverpool been ever so slightly more ruthless in front of goal, or had they benefited from a slice or two of better fortune in key moments, we might’ve been lauding one of the great individual performances in a Champions League final by Ibrahima Konate. 

Pre-match, the question as to who would partner Virgil van Dijk at centre-back was Jürgen Klopp’s most difficult one to answer. While Konate had played 90 minutes in all but one of the knockout games en route to the final, having also been given the nod in the FA Cup final victory over Chelsea, he’d been uncharacteristically shaky in the final Premier League game of the season against Wolves. Joel Matip, meanwhile, represented the safer bet with a far greater wealth of experience in high pressure games of this nature. 

The fact that Klopp went with Konate was the ultimate show of faith in his ability to rise to the occasion, and also presumably a tactical judgement call based on Konate’s recovery pace up against Vinicius in that right-hand channel. Amid the disappointment of how the game unravelled, Konate more than justified his inclusion with an imperious display that exhibited not just his superb reading of the game and physical prowess, but also his supreme composure and maturity for a player who, it’s easy to forget, only just turned 23. On the biggest stage of all, on a pitch full of world class superstars, he was fully in his element – a shining light on an otherwise bleak evening for Liverpool. 

It was, quite remarkably, Konate’s first taste of defeat in a Liverpool shirt, in his 29th outing of an exceptional debut season. Opportunities proved hard for Konate to come by at first, making just a couple of appearances in the first two months of the season following his £36m arrival from RB Leipzig, but that patience paid off, big time, as he steadily grew in stature month by month as the campaign progressed. Thrown in from the start against Man United in late October, he looked instantly at ease as Liverpool ran riot at Old Trafford, slotting in alongside Van Dijk with a swagger and a grin.

Considering how much Klopp demands from his centre-backs both in and out of possession, and the value he places on players gaining rhythm through regular minutes, Konate’s ability to come into the side from the cold and perform at such a high level was extraordinary. The technical quality, positional intelligence, concentration and sheer athleticism required to play centre-back in Liverpool’s ultra-high-line system arguably makes it one of the hardest roles to play in world football – and it’s within that context that Konate’s impact should be assessed. 

It’s not like he came into a team playing five-at-the-back, or with two defensive midfielders providing a constant layer of protection in front of the defence; there is perhaps no team that leaves their centre-backs as exposed on a regular basis, and that asks them to take as many calculated risks, as Liverpool. That’s by design, of course – it’s why they’re able to pin teams back and dominate games high up the pitch as relentlessly as they do – but it requires centre-backs with an extremely rare skill set to make it work. 

It’s a tricky position to analyse with numbers, because a lot of the most important work the best centre-backs do is immeasurable. For instance, when you see Van Dijk calmly shepherding a striker away from goal to avert a dangerous situation, choosing to stay on his feet rather than make a challenge which could give away a dangerous foul, it doesn’t show up in the post-match statistics. Likewise, when a centre-back narrows the angle for a striker to shoot at goal through clever positional play, prompting them to miss, it doesn’t register on the usual metrics. 

By a similar token, it’s actually often centre-backs from teams near the bottom of the league who show up highest for tackles, blocks and interceptions, because they have far more last-ditch defending to do on a game-by-game basis. 

All that said, certain metrics can still offer some indication of centre-back performance in specific areas. Across all competitions in his first season at Liverpool, Konate averaged 3.84 progressive passes* per 90 – not far behind Matip (4.47) and just ahead of Van Dijk (3.3). As for progressive carries, he averaged 3.68 per 90, significantly behind Matip (7.97) and once again narrowly ahead of Van Dijk (3.19). 

(As per Fbref, progressive pass is defined as any pass that moves the ball towards the opponent’s goal by at least 10 yards from its furthest point in the last six passes, or into the opposition box, excluding passes in the defending 40% of the pitch. Progressive carries are any time a player moves with the ball at least five yards towards the opponent’s goal, or into the box, excluding in the defending 40% of the pitch).

What this tells us is that Konate isn’t quite as ambitious on the ball as Matip (yet), and is roughly as progressive as Van Dijk. That’s a pretty good starting base. He ranks in the 87th and 82nd percentile of all centre-backs in the big five leagues over the past year for these categories, too, so while it’s a part of his game with clear scope for further development, he’s already towards the upper end of ball-playing centre-backs in Europe. 

In terms of aerial duels, he again falls in between Liverpool’s two most senior centre-backs, with an overall success rate of 70.7% (which places him in the 85th percentile of centre-backs in Europe’s big five leagues), versus 77.9% for Van Dijk and 68.8% for Matip. That aerial dominance comes in handy in both boxes, and judging by his flurry of goals against Man City and Benfica towards the back end of the season, Konate certainly has it in him to become an increasingly prominent threat from set pieces in the future. 

He’s almost exactly equal to his centre-back teammates for ball recoveries, averaging 11.6 per 90 to Matip’s 11.7 and Van Dijk’s 12.3, which places him in the 90th percentile of centre-backs in Europe’s big five leagues. While his speed and strength are hugely valuable assets in that regard, it’s his sense of anticipation that’s most noteworthy at such a young age. 

His durability, too, has been massively encouraging, shedding the injury-prone tag many feared he might bring with him from Leipzig, where he missed 45 games over the previous two seasons – largely due to a hip flexor injury he suffered back in October 2019. These things can’t be predicted, of course, but it bodes well that Konate was able to stay fit for virtually the entirety of a season in which Liverpool went the distance in every single competition. 

As you would expect with any young defender, particularly one settling into a new league and playing against some of the best attackers in the world, Konate has dropped the occasional clanger – most notably against Benfica in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final and against Wolves at Anfield in the final league game of the season. That tendency to suffer a momentary lapse in concentration is perhaps his most obvious flaw to iron out. 

Such errors in judgement, though, have been a rarity in a mighty impressive start to life at Liverpool. Already, that £36m fee is looking like money extremely well spent. If he continues on a similar trajectory – and there’s no reason to think he won’t – Liverpool may have in Konate not just the perfect partner for Van Dijk right now, but the heir to his throne when the time eventually comes.