View: Matty Cash showed his worth to Aston Villa with performance against Kylian Mbappe at World Cup
You may not know it based on the result and the man of the match, but Aston Villa defender Matty Cash actually had a good game against Kylian Mbappe.
The two faced off in the World Cup round of 16 clash between France and Poland, where Mbappe scored two and created another for the French to earn a 3-1 win and progress into the quarter-finals where they will face England.
Reading that, you probably think that he destroyed Cash and the Villa man was left beaten and embarrassed during the game, but anyone watching it knows that wasn’t the case.
Obviously the Paris Saint-Germain attacker came out on top of their individual duel, causing havoc throughout the game with his electric pace and movement.
But Cash was able to hang with him for the most part and it was only moments of pure brilliance that decided the game in France’s favour, leaving Cash and his Polish teammates to play catch up against a superior side.
Statistically Cash was solid though.
According to WhoScored, Cash completed two of his three tackle attempts successfully, a total only bettered by two of his teammates on the game with three apiece.
He also managed to complete 31 of his passes successfully from 40 attempts, and only two of his teammates had more touches of the ball during the game too.
Cash was involved in a lot of the good things that happened for Poland in the game and showed any Aston Villa fan exactly why the club tied him down to a new contract earlier this year for the long-term.
After the game he admitted that Mbappe was “the toughest challenge I’ve come up against in my career, by far,” but he can keep his head held high following his performance.
He’ll now return to the Midlands for a little rest before taking his rightful place in the Villa starting lineup to take on Liverpool on Boxing Day, where he’ll have the slightly easier task of taking on Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez or Mohammed Salah instead.
Had Villa not already secured Cash to a big, long-term deal recently then you can be sure that plenty of teams would be taking a look at him following these performances.
Now though, the club are in a strong position to turn any interest away and keep their best players to build for Unai Emery as he looks to get this great club back to where it belongs.
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