The Vancouver Whitecaps have made their first major addition of the secondary transfer window and it’s 22-year-old Peruvian winger Kenji Cabrera. Personally, I see Cabrera as a player with a lot of green flags but with a few pesky red flags sprinkled in to keep things interesting.

Now, normally with these signings, I am going off of stats and whatever video is available online. But this time I am fortunate to have access to someone who has watched Cabrera play a lot. My Target Scouting colleague Jamie Ramia recently wrote a report on Cabrera which you can read here. I will not re-cap the whole thing in too much detail but in general, Ramia describes Cabrera as a skilled playmaker, two-footed, and a strong dribbler. He projects Cabrera as a player who could make an impact in the Belgian or Dutch leagues. Obviously, there is quite a bit of variation in quality within those leagues but broadly speaking, I would say they are at a similar level to MLS (i.e Ajax would walk MLS but most MLS teams would beat the relegation fodder in the Eredivisie). So far so good! Wouldn’t you know it, Ramia’s description of Cabrera matches up very well with the data:

Cabrera is naturally going to draw comparisons to Pedro Vite. I think that is a little unfair as Manuel Veth’s reporting makes it pretty clear the Whitecaps plan further reinforcements in the midfield which suggests Cabrera is not expected to replace Vite all by himself (cue the Moneyball clip about re-creating a star in the aggregate). That said, the similarities are hard to deny. Here is Vite’s radar from this season for comparison.

It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison as Cabrera usually plays in the forward line and Vite usually plays in a midfield three (they also play in different leagues). But these two radars are broadly the same shape. Cabrera gives you a little bit less progressive passing (more relative to his position but less overall) but has more than double Vite’s progressive carries (moving the ball significantly closer to the opponent’s goal by running/dribbling with it). Cabrera also gives you a lot more on the defensive side of things, at least in terms of easily quantifiable defensive actions.

Everything to this point has been extremely encouraging. So, let’s talk about some of those red flags. Cabrera is clearly good at moving the ball towards the opponent’s goal but when it comes to putting the ball into the opponent’s goal he is a bit lacking. 0.36 xG+xA/90 for a winger is on the low side. But the really big driver of this disappointing number is that Cabrera hardly takes any shots. 1.54 shots per 90 is just straight-up bad for someone playing in the forward line. I would be more forgiving of a player who hasn’t quite translated skill into consistent offensive output if he were 19 or 20. But Cabrera turned 22 in January, he’s only just barely eligible for a U-22 initiative slot. That’s not to say it’s impossible for Cabrera to make improvements from here but there is a lot less runway to improve than someone like Nelson Pierre (20) or Jeevan Badwal (19) has. Of course, improving the offensive output of a winger in his early 20s is a trick Jesper Sørensen has pulled off twice this season with Ali Ahmed and Jayden Nelson blowing everything they had done to this point in their career out of the water. But surely it won’t work out for him every single time…will it?

To a lesser extent, there is also the matter of fit. From Ramia’s report, we know that Cabrera likes to operate in the left half space and takes a lot of set-pieces. But that’s also what Ryan Gauld likes to do and he will be back at some point. Are they going to be able to play together? Would Cabrera be as effective in a different role? It’s hard to say. This isn’t the end of the world by any means as recent weeks have made it abundantly clear the Whitecaps need more depth. But if Cabrera is purely going to be Gauld’s second that does not give him very much scope to develop into a star or an asset with re-sale value.

Here is the obligatory highlights package:

By way of concluding thoughts: I think if the Whitecaps are able to get the same level of development out of Cabrera as they got out of just about all of their other young players this season, this will go down as a good signing. But if they have anything less than that level of success, the signing will probably go down as a fairly mediocre one.