The best prospect in Mexican football?

Analyzing Gilberto Mora, in Liga MX and academy football

Author

Tom Harrison
February 25, 2025

Raw data from fotmob, Wyscout and Golstats. Photo from Récord.

Thought: It’s possible to use academy data to create probabilities that a player will make it to Liga MX, and if anyone stands out as much as Gilberto Mora, they might be ready for first team football.

Juan Carlos Osorio’s Tijuana project is in trouble. His team sits 17th in the table, have the worst defense in Liga MX (18.2 xG against), and has signed players that don’t have the quality on the ball to suit his high possession style of play.

However, Osorio’s decision to give a debut, and continue giving minutes, to Gilberto Mora has been a big success, and could be important for the future of the club. Mora has already passed 1,000 league minutes played, despite only being 16-years-old (and he won’t be 17 until October). No one else under the age of 19 has played in 1,000 minutes in 2024-25. Any young Mexican with so many minutes is an interesting prospect, and deserves a detailed analysis.

Where does he play? Which zones does he occupy?

Mora has been used in different positions during 2024-25; striker, attacking midfielder, interior midfielder, left-winger. However, he seems to prefer to occupy the centre of the pitch, often between the lines.

The heat maps show where he’s touched the ball in his two previous matches as a starter. Against Cruz Azul, Mora played as a left-winger on paper, but didn’t always create width, which is normally the job of a winger in Osorio’s system. Versus Juárez, Mora was an interior midfielder, and we can see his influence in the centre of the final third. Also, it seems that Gilberto tends to drift towards the left more than the right.

What are his strengths and weaknesses?

A concept analysis can help to understand Mora’s style of play and how he ranks against other Liga MX players. I’ve developed this analysis to reduce a large number of metrics into specific football concepts.

Concept analysis versus other Liga MX attacking midfielders in 2024-25, minimum of 600 minutes played. Green bar = Better ranking. Red bar = Worse ranking. The number inside the bar shows his percentile rank.

Mora doesn’t stand-out in the concepts that tend to have a greater impact in a match result; goal generation or chance creation (for teammates). His xG per game, 0.15, is around league average for his position, which is still pretty impressive given his age, whilst his xA (expected assists) of 0.12 is a bit below average.

Taking into account where Mora tends to receive touches of the ball, he hasn’t generated much ball progression into the box per game. Mora has completed more passes to the box from the right-half-space more than the left, despite playing more on the left. However, his two passes from the left-half-space did progress the ball into a dangerous cut-back zone.

Gilberto’s shot map is more impressive. There aren’t too many low-value long shots, with a cluster of attempts from just inside the box on the left, often following a carry into the box, where Mora can open his body up to shoot with his stronger right-foot. Also, there’s a group of dangerous shots from around the penalty spot, showing his ability to find spaces in valuable positions to generate higher xG shots.

Mora has two clear strengths in his concept analysis. His high ranking in ball carrying and dribbles isn’t too surprising given his age. Peak age, in general, for this concept is younger than for other concepts, and there are many historic cases of young players making their mark with their ability at ball carrying and in 1vs1 situations.

His ball retention is more surprising. Mora has adapted to Osorio’s patient, possession style, and despite frequently occupying zones where space is limited (the centre of the final third), and the Mexican has the ability to maintain possession.

Gilberto Mora combines a high pass success rate with an above league average dribble success rate

However, Mora could take more risks on the ball and improve his ability to recognize opportunities to attempt forward passes in order to develop his ball progression and creation. To be fair, this is often a weakness for a younger player. In contrast to the ball carrying and dribbles concept, a player’s peak age for progressive passes can be much older, at times after turning 30. Awareness and reading of the game are key factors in the quality and creativity of a player’s passes, and can develop given more experience and game time. In the short term, attempting to further develop his goal-scoring ability may be the most effective method of increasing Mora’s overall attacking output and impact on results.

It is possible to use data to find prospects like Mora?

With Golstats, we’re able to analyze data at the Liga MX academy level (U17, U19 and U23 leagues, as they are right now). The available metrics on Golstats aren’t as advanced, they don’t have xG or xA for example, but a more basic analysis can still be effective.

I’ve studied historic cases of players that have, and haven’t, made it to Liga MX, looking at their data in different academy categories, per position and role. My study found that it’s possible to generate percentage probabilities (or confidence intervals) that a player will end up receiving a decent amount of minutes in Liga MX. Also, I was able to categorize prospects, based on their possibility of making it to the first team.

Gilberto Mora is defined as a striker in the U16 category (the third category of the Liga MX academy system), the only level of fuerzas básicas that he played significant minutes in, that’s covered by Golstats. As would be expected, Mora profiles in the link-up striker or false-9/second striker role. He ranks as the best player in that role, in the category, since Golstats began covering the Liga MX academy leagues in 2018. Interestingly, the second ranked player is also at Xolos, Ramiro Árciga.

Mora stood-out in nearly every metric that matters for a link-up/creative striker

So, it is absolutely possible to find future prospects like Mora by using data, but very few players have historically stood-out quite as much as him. Clearly, he was far too good for the level, given how he’s managed to perform in Liga MX.

Teams can use data to analyze the possibility that their academy players will make it to the first team, better understand who their best prospects are, and make decisions regarding development pathways. And if a player with a similar performance level to Gilberto Mora shows up in the future, they might be ready to make an impact in the first team.

Thank you for reading, if you’d like to contact me regarding any questions, comments or to consult my services, you can contact me on:

También, se puede leer este artículo en Español- https://cambiodejuego.beehiiv.com/