GEORGE LAKIN explores how Cunha’s maverick style is rewriting the script for Wolves—and what it says about the balance between coaching and freedom in the beautiful game.
Weight of pass: perfect.
Weight of first touch: perfect.
Shot technique: inimitable.
Movement on the ball: smooth as butter.
Time and space: aplenty.
When a player makes this many elements of the game look this easy, it’s obvious there will be some debate about whether this is the result of coaching or just raw footballing ability. The BBC’s Pat Murphy put out a post on X, claiming in no uncertain terms that he thinks it’s the latter:
‘Matheus Cunha is a Brazilian footballer. That is all. Provider, scorer, physically strong, convinced of his own sublime talent. Unfazed by any challenge. Let him plough his own furrow without coaches interfering, and this maverick will keep @Wolves up.’
I think the truth lies somewhere in between.
Gary O’Neil has spoken about how Cunha is most effective when afforded freedom, when he can drift into pockets and play his own game. To my mind, that’s O’Neil’s way of saying he facilitates exactly what Pat Murphy was alluding to. Murphy could have worded it better, yes, but in my opinion, he was too quick to be shot down; many believe that in the modern game, coaching is everything, essentially impossible to escape, such is the tactical and data-driven approach to football.
Percentage plays rule in the endless pursuit of marginal gains. We know O’Neil fits this bill to a tee – the direction in which the game has gone personified, and the exact reason Johnny Phillips claimed Murphy was “waxing lyrical from a different age.”
But sometimes that much-sought edge might be found in eschewing all bar charts and positional heat maps and simply allowing a maverick to wreak havoc. Which is why I think Pat Murphy was onto something, and O’Neil deserves massive credit for getting the very best out of Cunha. In fact, his development of Cunha could very well point to the development of his own coaching abilities.
Football is an ever-changing entity; what worked once can, of course, work again – be reintroduced out of nowhere, under a different guise, a different name, a different era. It’s still just 22 players on a field. Why does the footballing world seem condemned to trudge in the trail of Pep Guardiola’s hyper-coaching? His dynasty won’t last forever; no one’s ever does. Can there be no one else with initiative?
For me, Gary O’Neil has done just that with Cunha. He’s gone off his own script a little, relaxed his usual stubborn approach (which has garnered much criticism), and shown flexibility in his own principles; he’s relinquished control and handed it over to the footballing genius that is Matheus. He’s trusting that and will reap the rewards.
I too think Cunha is a maverick and needs to be allowed to be just that in order to get the best out of him. He cannot be confined or caged; his genius, his majesty, his predatory instinct must be allowed to roam like a lion on the savannah to have maximum, deadly effect.
For this to be the case, he does need to be allowed off script, and O’Neil understands that. But there’s still a balancing act O’Neil must play as manager, and this may have been where the criticism of his work off the ball came from – a misunderstanding between player and manager agreeing to deviate from the original script, perhaps before drafting a new one, akin to the original, only with the moments for improv pencilled in.
If Cunha was told to essentially just play, perhaps it was not explicit enough when it was explained that this only applies in possession. Out of possession, O’Neil clearly wants him to toe the line, to follow the original script (improv is over, if only momentarily) and understandably so, in order to help keep the defensive aspect of our game resolute – something that has undoubtedly been the team’s biggest weakness this season.
But there is so much to justify allowing Cunha off script, to grant him a licence to “just play.” When a manager has a player this good, I think it’s the only way to go. It would be pointless for a mere man to “coach” a superhero, after all. Their role is only to guide them. And I compare Cunha to a superhero because his abilities, some of which I listed at the start, strike me as nothing short of supernatural. I will do my very best to explain why…
His shot style feels elasticated, like a ball bearing in a slingshot. It’s a technique that I don’t think can be taught. It’s raw, natural ability. The way he gets such a sudden dip so consistently on his shots is as if he’s playing with a heavier ball than everyone else. How that strike against Aston Villa dropped into the bottom corner right in front of Emi Martinez, I will never know. Martinez himself looked totally bamboozled, as if he’d just encountered something totally unnatural, physically impossible almost. He might as well have.
The way he breaks lines too is seemingly effortless, like there are other forces at play (which I’ll come to). It’s the best I’ve seen since Adama, but the way he does it is very different. Adama was a player I adored at Wolves. He was exciting—he got you off your seat. Give him the ball, and there was always hope, and expectation, that something—anything—could happen. Adama was all about raw strength and power, pure speed, and unrestricted aggression. He would bulldoze his way through brutally, often practically falling to the ground but somehow remaining upright with a hand on the turf. Trademark Adama. He blustered and bustled his way through like a runaway train that no defender dared stand in front of, and frankly, it was brilliant.
Cunha has an equally effective but rather different approach. There’s a weightiness to his whole game—an unearthly force that seems to repel pressure and create 10 yards of space around him at all times. Let me put it like this: imagine you’re back in school, in a science lesson to be precise, and you have a box of little red and blue magnets. Put them in two parallel lines like a guard of honour, red halves facing inside; then take the last remaining magnet and guide it, red side first, straight through the middle. Imagine how each pair on either side, one by one, gets repelled and pushed aside as your magnet in hand smoothly passes through. That space around it, by the very nature of physics, is impenetrable. There is no concern whatsoever that the space will be encroached—it’s simply impossible. You and your magnet glide through with immense satisfaction. That’s Cunha’s approach—that’s how it feels to watch him break lines. I don’t know how he does it, but when you watch him, the confidence you have in him not being dispossessed is unmatched, as if the forces of nature themselves are working with him to keep the ball.
On the topic of the ball and his feet, the magnetic allegory works again. Instead of repelling, they attract—like the ball is on the red side and his foot is blue. Fling it away, and it’s attracted right back, sticking like glue on its inevitable return. When he releases the ball, either to pass or shoot, it’s as if it barely wants to leave his foot. He has to ensure it surpasses the magnetic field to avoid it coming straight back to him. That just helps create the most sumptuous weight of pass and shot you’ll ever see. Heavy is the only word I can use to describe it. Heavy like metal.
The most similar player I’ve seen in this regard—movement on the ball and the weight of pass and shot—is David Silva. Cunha, however, has the added advantages of physical presence, pace, and predatory instincts. Honestly, the sky is the limit.
Where Cunha excels most compared to a player like Adama is in his end product. Adama was a physical specimen, but the ball too often bounced off his foot as if rebounding off a brick wall—which, let’s face it, it pretty much was. The magnet analogy works in reverse for Adama: flip them all around, blue side inside; try moving your magnet through now. Every pair sticks like glue and needs shaking off. Not so graceful—that’s Adama. Seemingly exhausted at the end of it all, Adama would so often do absolutely nothing with it. It didn’t stop me loving him, but that was the cold, hard truth. Cunha, on the other hand, seems far from exhausted. So easy was his passage, so plentiful is his time on the ball, and so reliable is his weight of pass, it actually seems harder to do nothing with it. There’s an inevitable feeling of a good outcome when Cunha’s on the ball, which, for a fan, is utterly priceless.
There’s a juxtaposing quickness and slowness to his game. It’s as if he has acres of space all the time, as if he has minutes, not seconds, on the ball. Case in point: he seemed to wait an age before deciding to pull the trigger against Brighton.
On the turn, he is second to none. He uses his body better than anyone I’ve seen. There’s a sturdiness and solidity about him, but absolutely no rigidity. His trademark is a heavy touch on the turn, seemingly blind but evidently not. And on the subject of weight—heavy, yes, but never too heavy. On the turn, the ball never gets away from him. He moves with the ball. He is so spatially aware that you can see, with every touch in full stride, he is glancing from side to side. He is constantly taking pictures of the pitch. When everyone else is still shaking that Polaroid picture, in his mind, it’s already fully developed.
That’s the true measure of footballing intelligence. He’s always a step ahead—at the very highest level, no less.
There’s been an argument bandied about recently that Cunha is the best player outside the top six. Sorry, what? I think he’s head and shoulders above a lot of players currently starting week in, week out in the top six’s front lines too. Stats back this up as well. But honestly, I don’t need to pull them up—anyone who’s watched him regularly knows this to be true.
Which brings me to the final part of my ode to Cunha: the inevitable interest he’s attracting from top teams and his eventual price tag. Like the Mona Lisa, I wish the state would buy him and leave the world perpetually going through the futile motions of pricing him as they like; regardless, he will never be sold.
Sadly, the reality is quite the opposite. With Wolves being built on a frugal, self-sustainability model—and therefore unlikely to match Cunha’s longer-term ambitions—it is almost inevitable that he will one day be sold.
But remember, we paid €40 for him, which raised a lot of eyebrows from fans at the time. That heavy price tag (which now looks light—there’s a theme here!) may well be our saving grace. It may be the very reason we get to enjoy Cunha for a season or half longer than we otherwise would. Why? Because I’m fairly sure Fosun will want to hold out for a double-your-money job, at least. That might put a few clubs with ever-so-slightly shallower pockets off for the time being, but ultimately there will be absolutely no shortage of suitors.
Eventually, a club with pockets like black holes will rip entire galaxies apart to prise him away from us. In other words, pay £100m. I, for one, will feel no richer for it. In fact, I will feel infinitely poorer because it’s only once in a while that a player of such gravitas and sheer, unbridled footballing ability graces the Molineux turf in a gold shirt.
No amount of money can replace that. All we can do is hope that one day we somehow hit the jackpot again.
ARTICLE BY GEORGE LAKIN
George fell in love with Wolves the moment Colin Cameron fizzed one into the bottom corner against Plymouth Argyle on the 31st December 2005- during his first ever Wolves game as a child.
He loves digging a little deeper when it comes to Wolves, often conducting his own research to help him read between the lines and increase his knowledge and understanding of all aspects of our great club. He is keen to share his insight and findings with fans who share in his biggest love, -after his lovely wife, Amy and little boy, Tommy of course!- our mighty Wolverhampton Wanderers!
George is passionate about reaching and uniting all corners of the Wolves family, young and old, near and far. So make sure you don’t miss his weekly column exclusively for Always Wolves this season!
Matheus Cunha: A Maverick Force Who Redefines What’s Possible at Wolves