Paul Okon-Engstler is a 21-year-old midfielder who plays for Sydney F.C. Okon-Engstler was previously in the systems of Club Brugge and Benfica, but never made a first team appearance for either. He returned to Australia and has been a regular starter for Sydney this season. He has 2 senior caps for Australia already.
Okon-Engstler is listed at 6’0″ (1.83 m) and is very broad. He plays as a defensive midfielder in Sydney’s 4-2-3-1. Okon-Engstler’s size gives him an advantage in physical battles, and he generally does a good job of shielding his area. However, he is not particularly fast, so he doesn’t cover that big of an area. This is somewhat made up for by his strong positioning, but he is naturally a bit limited in this regard.
On the ball, Okon-Engstler is a mixed bag. His biggest strength is definitely his ball carrying. He is a very powerful runner once he gets up to speed. This allows him to make quick progress up the field and get his team into the middle 3rd. However, his passing leaves a lot to be desired. He completes very few forward passes, not necessarily for a lack of trying. He is generally quite a conservative passer, but when he does go forward, he loses it quite a lot, usually because his pass is intercepted or he significantly overhits it. He does have his moments progressing the ball through passing, but he isn’t able to do it with nearly enough consistency. That said, he is quite good at keeping the ball under pressure with short passes. Okon-Engstler is also quite slow to make decisions on the ball. I think this is a major contributing factor to his struggles with progressing the ball. Too frequently, he misses out on a chance to complete a forward pass because he just takes too long to commit to it.
Okon-Engstler is a young midfielder who is big and not unskilled. So I can see why he might garner some interest from a higher level. But I think his on-ball limitations and lack of pace are likely to hold him back from having an impact at a significantly higher level than the A-League.
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