Carlos Baleba

His repeatable signature. A step only appears if its reliability score (sample size × match coverage) reaches at least Medium confidence — pattern mining, not anecdotes.

19 tracked carries (9.2/90, 0 progressive, 145m total) — the ball moving with his touches, a different signal from dribbles below (beating an opponent 1v1). even a player who rarely dribbles past a man can still carry the ball forward constantly in build-up; this is that.

How often an attacker gets past him in a 1v1 defensive duel — the closest signal the data has to "dribbled past" (no attacker-beat-defender field exists directly, so this counts tackles he attempted and lost).

He attempted only 2 dribbles of his own all season — dribbling is not part of this role; his ball-carrying is covered above, his defending against the dribble below.

2 key passes (0.97/90), 0 of them assists — where his chance creation specifically comes from, 18 zones (6×3), showing his share of key passes originating there.

Three clustered sequence diagrams from his own event data — his three busiest routes: the way he progresses, the pattern behind his chances, and where a turnover turns dangerous.

36 defensive actions across the season (17.5/90). Where he wins the ball, and how — the core question for a defender. Aerial duels are not recorded for this competition, so aerial dominance is not measured here.

Man Utd's output per match with Carlos Baleba (3 matches) versus without him (5 matches). Insufficient evidence — the without-sample is only 5 matches; treat every Δ below as noise until more games exist. What his own defending should move — goals conceded and results — leads; attacking output (largely out of a defender's hands) is shown after, for context. A proper on-off model needs many more minutes.

Of everything Man Utd produced this season, the categories where the biggest share ran through Carlos Baleba specifically — his share of the team total, not a per-90 rate.

Not raw event counts — football style scores: weighted models scored 0–100 against the 258 defensive mids in the pool (min 450 min). This is what separates players who post similar numbers but play differently. Proxy dimensions are inferred from on-ball data; true off-ball running / under-pressure context is not measured.

Closest comparables measured on the style scores above, within the same position family — so it separates how players are alike, not just how much they touch the ball. Each line explains the shared strength and the divergent mechanism. A light physical-profile term (height / weight; this player: 179 cm / 73 kg) is included at a quarter of one style axis's weight — enough to break ties between stylistic twins, not to override style. Scope: pooled across the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Ligue 1 and Serie A, percentiled within each player's own league before comparing — a match from another league is marked with its league name.

Style, not quality: a high match here means two players tend to produce the ball in similar ways — it is not a ranking, a scouting recommendation, or a claim that they are equally good.

Carlos Baleba is a ball-winning 6 / tempo controller: 88% completion, 9 line-breaks and 3.4 progressive passes /90, resisting pressure with 50% dribble success. A central controller. [Off-ball screening position and scanning need tracking data.]