Michael Forbes is a 20-year-old centre-back who plays for Cavalier in the Jamaica Premier League. Forbes has established himself as a regular starter this season, having spent the previous one on an intra-league loan to Vere United. Forbes has one U-20 appearance for Jamaica.
Forbes is tall (6’3″/1.91 m) and lanky with very long legs. He generally plays on the left side of a back three, though he is right-footed. Forbes’ passing and technical ability is a clear cut above his peers in Caribbean competition. Forbes pretty consistently finds players in space and breaks lines. He doesn’t carry the ball often, but he is good at using feints to open up space for his passing. That said, sometimes his decision-making is a bit suspect. A couple of times, he played baffling lofted passes backwards to Cavalier’s last man back, a player who seemed like he was asking for trouble (though he was not punished for it in the games that I watched). I think he is also a little bit too quick to go long if there is not immediately something on. Cavalier’s style is extremely direct, so it is possible he is being instructed to play the ball long in those situations. In theory, Forbes’ height should make him a danger from attacking set pieces, but he is surprisingly bad in the air. Contributing factors to this, in my view, are poor timing of his jumps and weak positional awareness in attack.
When it comes to defending, Forbes is a bit of a mixed bag. As mentioned above, Forbes is quite weak in aerial duels for a player of his height. He is a bit lacking in agility in general, so whenever he needs to jump or turn quickly, he struggles. This means he has a hard time when the ball is played behind him. Forbes has middling speed, but turning takes so long that it takes an ice age for him to catch up with runners behind. That said, Forbes’ size does make him effective in duels. His very long legs also give him quite a lot of reach to win the ball back in ground duels. Forbes is generally quite good at getting tight to attackers and is very difficult to turn against.
Michael Forbes has some significant problems, but he is young, big, and reasonably skilled. This is a profile that is going to be interesting to someone. Ironically, considering his size, I think most of his problems are physical in nature. If he can improve his agility and general coordination, I would say he has an outside chance of making it to Liga MX or MLS. In the short term, a smaller step up in CONCACAF makes sense.
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