AFCON Stats Review: Vincent Aboubakar

The hosts will always be among the favourites at a tournament, but coming into the finals, Cameroon were ranked 50th in the world and seventh in Africa. Correspondingly, some bookmakers had them 7th best to win the tournament, while Opta’s pre-tournament predictions gave them a 3% chance of winning the title (10th lowest), with Nigeria & Morocco (15%) leading expectations. On an individual level, this was expected to be a tournament for the likes of Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Riyad Mahrez. Given their club exploits, these are some of the best players in the world in their positions. But the goalscoring shine has been taken by names few expected, most notably Vincent Aboubakar, who has more goals than all three combined, and his exploits have been a key part of Cameroon going further into the tournament.

A Difference Maker

Even after scoring a brace against Burkina Faso in the opener, there were still a lot of questions about his abilities, mainly because both goals were penalties. But he has responded emphatically to the doubters – with an additional four goals from open play. The obvious numbers already make impressive reading – not even Samuel Eto’o managed to score as many goals at an AFCON tournament for Cameroon as the six that Aboubakar has managed in this edition.

All in all, the only players in AFCON history have scored in a single game than Aboubakar, and he is the first player to score more than five goals in a single edition of AFCON since Egypt’s Hossam Hassan and Bafana Bafana’s Benni McCarthy both scored 7 goals in 1998. He is slowly evoking an aura that only a handful of the most fearsome strikers in AFCON history have ever attained.

He’s A Shot Taker

Aboubakar leads the shooting volume charts at the tournament with 21 shots so far, without the ‘benefit’ of extra time. Given the low number of games, international tournaments are not really conducive to statistics and analytics until the tournament is nearing its end. As such, we try to go into detail as much as possible. In this case, we’ve broken down his shots to see if there is any developing pattern.

He has been consistent in his shot numbers, averaging five-ish shots a game, and averaging three on target. In all games, he’s also been a constant presence in the opposition box, but he doesn’t waste any of the touches he makes in the box, more or less turning just over half of them into shots.

A Hunting Lion

Even then, taking a large volume of shots is not a good thing on its own. The next question to consider is if those shots are coming from good locations. Excuse the pun, but like a hunting (Indomitable) lion, a striker must choose when and where they decide to attack. Most of his attempts are central, which may say more about the team structure than his choice.

xG-wise, the game against Ethiopia was his best – he peaked for shots on target and for xG. He managed two goals with classic centre forward positioning, floating around inside the box hunting for pockets of space, while patiently waiting for well-placed assists. Did someone mention lions?

He’s More Than Just Shots

While shot analysis is an obvious place to start for a striker, he offers more than that, with a range of tidy passes a key part of his arsenal. Again the match against Ethiopia stands out – Aboubakar attempted 14 passes and was successful in all of them. Yes, they cruised to a 4-1 win in the end, but 12 of the passes were done in a tense first half. Against Cape Verde, he attempted 17 passes and was successful 16 times, and even notched an assist in the Comoros game.

With a maximum of three games remaining for any player in the competition, it’s hard to see who will overtake Aboubakar for the Golden Boot. Musa Barlow is next best on shots (18), but needs 4 goals to equal Aboubakar, and comes up against Cameroon next. Should Barrow fail to knock the Indomitable lions out, Aboubakar could set some interesting records.