A 6’4″ Premier League Striker Studies Victor Wembanyama. The Results Are Real.

Crystal Palace striker Jean-Philippe Mateta is 6 feet 4 inches of old-school center forward. That label usually comes with assumptions. He’s a target man. A battering ram. A guy who holds up play and doesn’t move much. Modern soccer, though, has been moving past that prototype for years. And Mateta decided he wasn’t going to be the guy left behind.

So he started watching Zlatan Ibrahimovic. And then he started watching Victor Wembanyama.

Yes, the same Wembanyama. The 7-foot-4 San Antonio Spurs rookie who bends the geometry of a basketball court. Mateta told L’Équipe that studying Wembanyama’s movement became part of his training routine. The thinking is straightforward enough. If a guy that tall can move that fluidly, then a guy Mateta’s size has no excuse to be stiff.

Adapting to what the game demands now

Mateta isn’t the first big striker to get told he needs to add mobility to his game. He might be one of the more intentional about it. His routine now includes stretching, core work and yoga. Back exercises too. The whole package is designed to keep his frame from becoming a liability in a league that prizes press-resistant forwards who can cover ground.

It worked. Mateta has turned himself into a legitimate Premier League starter. Not just a physical presence but a player who can make a run, shift direction and finish in tight spaces. The kind of guy who doesn’t look like he’s moving at a different speed than everyone else.

World Cup payoff

This summer, Didier Deschamps named Mateta to France’s 26-man World Cup squad. That’s the concrete result of years of doing the boring work. The mobility work. The stuff nobody sees in a match but that keeps a 6-foot-4 forward from getting cooked by quicker defenders 70 minutes in.

Mateta said he started by watching Ibrahimovic, who was doing the tall-and-agile thing before it became a trend. Then he added Wembanyama as a parallel study. Two guys built like skyscrapers who move like point guards. It’s not a bad template to borrow from.

He’s 28 now. This isn’t a young guy trying to figure out his body. It’s a veteran who saw where the game was heading and decided to get there ahead of schedule.