Will The New Signing Jump Start A Slumped Offense?
The signing of 28-year-old Mexican forward Patricio “Pato” Botello Faz will come as welcome news to a team, and a fanbase, that has seen a drought of goals from open play this season. As much as this team doesn’t look on paper like it needs help up front, the stats have proven otherwise.
This is an offense that was expecting to have an electric Lagos Kunga dribbling his way through opposing defenses while Aarón Gómez and Sergio Ors Navarro provided a lethal cunning in the box. Mehdi Ouamri and Kemy Amiche were supposed to be able to change out and keep the pressure and striking going either during rotational starts or as a super-sub style attack to put games out of reach or, failing that, claw back points from losing positions.
To say that this has been lacking would be an understatement. While Aarón’s presence has kept options open in the box, he can’t do it alone. Now, he won’t have to.
Pato should bring a little more balance and a lot more threat to the front—or at least something different for opponents to plan to. At 6’0”, he won’t be a towering target for Dion or Charlie to pick out on their crosses, but his experience and body type should be a massive presence in the box. He’s got a good first touch, an eye for positioning, and has playing time recently with Las Vegas Lights FC (18 Appearance, 4 Goals) and Detroit City FC (41 Apperances, 13 Goals) where he seemed to have hit his stride. He did spend some time in the infancy of league one appearing for Lansing Ignite in 2019 and South Georgia Tormenta in 2020.
So he does know how to score, he knows how to take touches and distribute, and he’s not going to be the type to let center backs push him around in the box. That’s good.
There are concerns though.
First, Pato hasn’t played since 2023 with Las Vegas Lights FC as he is coming of an Achilles’ injury that sidelined him last season. While I would expect that there has been ample rehab time and ability to work out and trust the healing, it’s always a wild card when someone is coming back off a significant injury. The 25-day contract is probably a chance to mitigate that and for Coach Casciato and staff to see exactly what he has when he goes at full speed.
The second concern is that of his age. He’s 28. Not old by too many standards, but there’s some concern that he won’t have the speed to offset Aarón or one of the other strikers. Many times this season we’ve seen a break up the middle that either our strikers couldn’t get to or that they couldn’t outpace their defender to get in on goal. With the way that our wingers are able to pace an attack, the forwards have to be able to keep up and give them support instead of just sending another cross into an area filled with defenders. Coupling this with his injury recovery above, and it will be interesting to see if he has the quickness to make defenders choose between conservatively marking him or marking another threat.
I have to say that those concerns are, at worst, not dealbreakers, and at best, me overthinking things. He’s still an exciting signing, and a clue that Dom and staff are taking the offensive outage seriously while there’s still time to do something about it. I’m very much anticipating his debut, getting to see what he can do on the pitch and, with any luck, him proving every one of my concerns wrong on his way to sparking Los Búhos back into a team that defenses fear.
Who Gives A Hoot? 