Issa Kabore
Issa Kabore
Current Club: Luton Town (on loan from Manchester City).
Previous Clubs: KV Mechelen, Rahimo.
Loan Clubs: Olympique Marseille, ESTAC Troyes, KV Mechelen.
International: Burkina Faso 32 caps 2 goals.
Trophies Won: N/A.
I am not normally one for writing a player profile after watching a player just a few times, but I thought I would make an exception due to the things I had noticed about him being so blatantly exposed in Luton's game against Chelsea. In fact his performance was so bad, he was given the hook at half-time, though I believe Luton head coach Rob Edwards will have no doubt claimed it was a tactical change. Anyway, to get to the point, Kabore's big issue is laziness.
He has technique, he has decent understanding of his role, but Kabore does not use it at all. The last profile I did, on Darwin Nunez, was that of a player that goes and makes things happen, he imposes himself on the game, rather than waiting for it to come to him. He does not react, so much as does. Nunez gives the ball away and he is immediately chasing it back down. A player makes an attacking run into space and Nunez is often the one tracking him, even though he is the centre-forward.
Counterpoint that against Kabore against Chelsea. In fact I can sum it all up, his inadequacies and deficiencies in just analysing one piece of play, the run up to Chelsea's first goal. Luton had the ball out on the left, there is a huge space on the right which Kabore, playing at right-back, heads into and just keeps going forward until, even though he is looking along the line and has time and space to look around, Kabore drifts lazily (this is a word that will probably feature often!) offside. There is no one within yards of him, there is no pressure to try and get the jump on a defender, nothing. It is just poor play.
Worse is that he then spends his time throwing his arms up complaining about the decision while slowly ambling back, leaving a huge gaping hole at right-back which Nicolas Jackson races into and the ball is played in behind the Luton defence to Jackson to run into. Kabore is still slowly, lazily, jogging back into position, only started to run when the ball is played, rather than when Jackson makes his run. Miles behind the play, he is in absolutely no position to effect things and is just a spectator to the attack.
Lukily for him, Jackson makes a mess of it and the defence gets ahold of the ball. At this point Kabore is on the edge of Luton's 6-yard box, with the danger looking over. The ball is passed inside to him and he lazily (yes again) passes the ball straight out to Chelsea midfielder Cole Palmer, with no Luton players near him to challenge him. Palmer strides forward while Kabore once again ambles out towards him, not busting a gut trying to make up for his mistake like Nunez would have done. No, Kabore just makes a half-arsed movement towards Palmer, who steps forward and shoots, scoring Chelsea's first goal, past a Kabore who has managed to get nowhere near him to put him under any pressure whatsoever.
Edwards must have decided at that moment that he needed to substitute Kabore off, because it was shockingly bad play. There was no effort, no intelligence, no desire or will to win. I know part of that could be down to Kabore being a loan player and so not really buying into the Luton relegation fight, but I would suggest that it is more likely that his personal shortcomings were just crudely exposed for all to see. He is just another of those young players who have made a move to a big club, on a big wage, too early in their career and has lost his focus and desire as a result.
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