Why Aston Villa will need half of their sensational swap deal to step up next season

Aston Villa’s blockbuster swap deal with Juventus nearing its conclusion, and it’s going to have huge ramifications for Unai Emery’s side as they prepare to compete in the Champions League for the first time in four decades.

Douglas Luiz, the midfield engine room who was arguably the single biggest driving force in Villa’s charge towards the top four of the Premier League, will head to Italy, and in his stead Villa will get a little richer and add two young players to the squad in the shape of promising winger Samuel Iling-Junior and 23-year-old Argentine midfielder Enzo Barrenechea. Barrenechea’s progress, in particular, could be vitally important.

Iling-Junior has a little less pressure on him to succeed simply by virtue of playing down the left flank. John McGinn’s consistency and energy, combined with the impressive emergence of Morgan Rogers, means that Emery has good options ahead of Iling-Junior already and if he takes his time to adapt to a new team or to grow towards his full potential, it shouldn’t significantly derail the team’s chances of making the top four again this season.

But with Luiz leaving, Villa will desperately need someone to fill his shoes and provide the same kind of dynamism, quality and work ethic in the middle of the park. There are other players who may step up – Jacob Ramsey, for instance, although there continues to be rumours of interest from other Premier League clubs like Tottenham Hotspur – but Barrenechea is now in that list and may well be required to take his game up a gear very quickly.

A product of the Newell’s Old Boys academy (which also gave Lionel Messi his start in football), Barrenechea moved to Sion in Switzerland in 2019 before making the move to Turin a year later. He played five times for the Juventus first team in the 2022/23 season but got his first chance at being a starter last season, which he spent on loan at Frosinone, who were eventually relegated from Serie A by one point.

That was a good induction to the rigours of top-level football and he mostly acquitted himself well, drawing occasional comparisons with players like Paul Pogba thanks to his assured, easy style with the ball at his feet and his broad passing range – but while he’s shown plenty of potential, he hasn’t made the leap to Pogba’s level just yet.

What he has done is show the capacity to break up attacking play effectively and repeatedly, generating high numbers of turnovers. He’s got plenty of strength and respectable pace and has the stamina to cover lots of ground, and reads the game well while demonstrating excellent positioning, meaning he’s often able to quash attacking moves without needing to resort to lunging tackles and the like.

That is handy given that Barrenechea does have a mistimed tackle in his locker, and while his success rate with tackle attempts is respectable, he also picked up 10 yellow cards last season thanks to the times he didn’t get it quite right. In his defence, playing in a team which enjoyed so little possession meant he was put in a lot of tricky spots over the course of a tough campaign.

He's also shown plenty of potential as a playmaker, too, with a good passing range – he looks to keep it simple most of the time but can pick a long ball out and spread the play. He doesn’t seem to have the vision to become a major part of the attack but can provide a good platform for a team looking to play direct football, as Villa often do. He’s a defensive midfielder first and foremost, and won’t replicate Luiz’s work around the edge of the area – but conversely, because he can’t fill the void in its entirety, there will be even more pressure on him to expand his passing game further to create more chances.

He was not Villa’s first choice for inclusion in this swap deal - they failed to find an agreement with former Leeds United player Weston McKennie, and Barrenechea was brought into proceedings as a result. He undoubtedly has potential, but he’s still early in the process of realising it and between the loss of Luiz and Boubacar Kamara’s ongoing rehabilitation after an anterior cruciate ligament injury, they may well need him to find the next level very quickly. He seems to have the technique, game intelligence and physical attributes required to make that happen – he just might need to make it happen quickly.