Daniel Muñoz has stood out for his lung-busting displays down Crystal Palace’s right flank this season, though the extent of his athleticism will still be a shock to many.
Crystal Palace fans would have been forgiven for rolling their eyes and expecting the worst.
Roy Hodgson, then Palace manager, addressed the media in January 2024 and was asked about a player the club had been heavily linked with. To all intents and purposes, it sounded like a deal was pretty close to sign Daniel Muñoz from Belgian side Genk.
But Hodgson said: “I’ve only seen a video of him, but on the video he looked good.”
Although we highly doubt Palace’s recruitment department simply punched “Daniel Muñoz goals and skills” into YouTube and plonked Hodgson in front of a two-minute video, we all know the limitations of compilations when assessing player ability.
Of course, Palace staff will have analysed the player in great detail, and in hindsight there wasn’t anything to worry about. But Hodgson’s openness about only seeing “a video” of Muñoz will have made some fans uneasy because of prior horror stories.
There was the time then-Southampton manager Graeme Souness was duped into signing Ali Dia in probably the most infamous transfer in Premier League history; and supposedly the first and only time Sir Alex Ferguson ever bought a player without seeing him play, Manchester United plucked the little-known Bébé from obscurity on the advice of Carlos Queiroz in 2010. Although Bébé went on to enjoy a respectable career as part of a quite heartwarming rags-to-riches story, he was clearly well below the level required by United at the time.
However, instead of it being an embarrassing oversight by the former England boss, the case of Palace signing Muñoz without Hodgson watching him live is more a reflection of modern-day recruitment not being manager-led. It was just a rare example of transparency with regards to the inner workings of a club’s recruitment process.
Ultimately, Palace and Hodgson were right to trust that process. Fifteen months on and Muñoz is not only among the first names on the teamsheet at Selhurst Park, but he’s also one of the Premier League’s best right-sided full-backs/wing-backs.
A bundle of energy up and down the right flank, Muñoz is an absolute freak of nature – in the kindest way possible.
In November 2023, Belgian publication Niewsblad presented some of Muñoz’s tracking data to a university professor and physiologist, highlighting he covered 11.9 kilometres in one match and 1,724m of that was at “high intensity”. The professor said: “The 11.9 kilometres that Muñoz covered is a very nice statistic, but not exceptional. His efforts at high intensity are [exceptional]. You only come across someone who sprints nearly 2km [in a match] very rarely in our Pro League.”
Although we can’t actually verify the particular numbers Niewsblad published, it’s certainly fair to say Muñoz has brought his supreme fitness and physicality to the Premier League, with the graphic below illustrating how he combines intensity and endurance.
In Opta’s own trove of tracking data, we have two metrics that suggest high-intensity movement. There’s ‘high-speed running’ (moving at 20-25km/h) and ‘sprinting’ (25+km/h); they are the two highest-intensity movements in our tracking data, and we can see how far each player runs while at speeds that qualify for the two metrics. Then, if you add up those distances, you can work out how much ground a player covered while at high intensity.
When looking at distance covered at high intensity in single matches this season, Muñoz accounts for 40% of the entries in the top 20 (8/20), while no other player appears more than three times.
That’s pretty startling, but we then wanted to look at player averages across the Premier League; who knows, there could’ve been a few games that brought Muñoz’s standard down considerably.
Filtering out all appearances where players featured for less than 45 minutes still produced a list of 466 individuals, of which Muñoz came out on top. In games he’s featured for more than 45 minutes this term, he’s averaged 1,500.9 metres at high intensity, over 55m more than anyone else (Dominic Solanke – 1,445.7m). It’s also nearly 250m more than any other full-back or wing-back, and even then Patrick Dorgu (1,261.8m) has played considerably less football over the full season than Muñoz has, which again highlights the Colombian’s remarkable endurance.
Similarly, Muñoz covers 10.8km on a per-90-minute basis, which is the fifth most among full-backs to have played at least 1,000 minutes – though he’s played an additional 995 minutes or more than three of those above him.
While his total distance covered of 303km over the full season is only enough to see him rank 13th in the Premier League, 9.64% of that has been travelled at “high speed”, which is the greatest proportion of all players to feature for at least 66 minutes.
It’s also worth highlighting that Muñoz’s 712 sprints this term is second only to Antonee Robinson (743), though the Palace wing-back has the season record for sprints in a single game (39).
Essentially, then, Muñoz’s running habits are phenomenal, and what makes them even more astonishing is the fact he’s renowned for being just as intense in training.
“Every session he’s the guy running the most, sprinting the most,” Palace coach Oliver Glasner said earlier this season. “Every game, he plays with the most intensity. It’s the wish of every manager to have such a player.”
And on top of this, his travels back to South America during international windows don’t seem to inhibit him either.
Just after the November international break, Glasner remarked: “[Muñoz] had just one training session with us after twice playing 90 minutes for Colombia, with all the travelling and the time difference.”
In Palace’s first league game after that, a 2-2 draw at Aston Villa, Muñoz travelled 1,751.1m at high intensity, which was his third furthest of the season and sixth furthest among all Premier League players this season.
“It shows his [physical] condition, but also his heart and character,” Glasner added. “He’s a fantastic player.”
Of course, athleticism on its own doesn’t make Muñoz a “fantastic player”, but his physical makeup undoubtedly has an impact on Palace, and it can be pinpointed to a degree.
For instance, Palace have played a greater proportion of this season with wing-backs as opposed to full-backs than any other team this season.
And even though Tyrick Mitchell has actually laid on more opportunities to teammates than Muñoz, the latter’s physical attributes allow him to occupy positions further up the pitch more often because tracking back in a hasty manner isn’t a problem in the slightest for the right wing-back.
In fact, as the graphic below shows, Palace’s right wing-back – nominally Muñoz – touches the ball higher up the pitch on average (58.1m) than the full-back/wing-back (from either flank) of any other club bar Manchester City (58.5m, left-back).
Palace are also one of the widest teams in the division, with 47.5m between their wing-backs on average; only Everton (48.8m), Fulham, West Ham (both 48.5m) and Aston Villa (48.0m) play with greater width at full-back or wing-back.
Muñoz’s physical abilities of course manifest in ways beyond simply encouraging people to point and say “that bloke runs a lot”. They are accompanied by an infectious positivity that sees him get into the opposition’s box very often.
For instance, only Josko Gvardiol (29) has recorded more shots among defenders than Muñoz (28) this term. It’s a similar story for touches in the opposition’s box, with Gvardiol’s 88 putting him just ahead of the Colombian (84), though highlighting Muñoz’s attacking mentality all the same.
His energy ensures opposition full-backs have to remain on their toes to avoid being caught out, so persistent are his surges – on or off the ball. In fact, it’s his off-ball runs that arguably make him a greater danger than those in possession.
He’s recorded 335 off-ball runs into the final third this season, which is the fifth most among all players, and 201 of those have been into the box. While he slides down the rankings to ninth in that metric, 201 is still 59 more than any other nominal full-back or wing-back, which should further emphasise just how aggressively he plays the role.
He’s impactful, too, with his eight goal involvements bettered only by Robinson (10) among Premier League defenders this term. He’s still able to be an effective presence down the other end as well, with only three full-backs/wing-backs recording more than Muñoz’s 222 pressures in their own defensive third, while his 3.5 tackles per 90 sees him rank second among defenders (min. 900 minutes played).
When Muñoz was playing at Genk, his former coach Wouter Vrancken spoke of a broader surprise across Belgium that it took so long for a club from a more illustrious league to snap him up.
It’s now easy to see why he felt that way. Given Muñoz turns 29 soon, he’s certainly not a hot prospect, but he is making up for what he might see as lost time.
With wing-backs growing in popularity and importance almost by the month in the Premier League, Muñoz is positioning himself at the forefront of the role’s renaissance. If he maintains this level, he might even be regarded as the modern benchmark.
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