Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso has placed Jo\u00e3o Pedro in elite company, saying the striker deserves to be discussed alongside Manchester City forward Erling Haaland. Alonso also drew a comparison with former Real Madrid teammate Karim Benzema, underlining the regard in which he holds the Brazilian.<\/p>\n
When asked if Pedro should be regarded as one of the Premier League\u2019s top forwards, Alonso answered without hesitation: \u201cI would say yes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you count how many top strikers we have in the Premier League, I am sure that Jo\u00e3o is there. So I would rate him that way.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has been top. Not just football-wise, personality-wise. His maturity, his desire. He has a very strong goal this year: to have a great season, to score many goals and to be a nominee for not just this month but more months.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not surprised, but really happy with the kind of player that we have here with Jo\u00e3o.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alonso\u2019s praise did not stop there. He went further by suggesting that Pedro shares traits with Benzema, with whom he played 195 times during their years together at Real Madrid between 2009 and 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many things he reminds me of Benzema,\u201d Alonso said of Pedro. \u201cBecause he is good in the box, he is good out of the box, he is good coming to the left side, he is good with the head.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is very complete and he is intelligent.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is still young. He still has things to develop. But he has many, many absolutely outstanding qualities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alonso backed Jo\u00e3o Pedro as a top Premier League striker and compared him to Benzema.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19355,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172,1125],"tags":[180],"class_list":["post-19356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","category-strikers","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}