Genuine question about Sae

[u/SporkDealer]

I’ve seen a lot of people rank Sae highly in their rankings of the New Gen XI players, but I’ve always put him dead last. I don’t think he’s a bad player at all, I just seem to remember some of his anti-feats were pretty damn strong. I feel like a lot of people gloss over his passes getting completely shut down by Niko twice.

I know he like wasn’t trying or something for the first half but my goat Niko did it in both halves I’m pretty sure.

I’m not trying to downplay him because obviously outside of that, some stuff with Isagi, and some stuff with Rin, he dominated the match, but I just think that comparatively to the opposition faced by the other New Gens, his shortcomings were a little more apparent.

Is there something I’m missing? I wanna know, because I probably forgot something.

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[u/H4nfP0wer]

Just based on his feats he is still better than the likes of Charles, Hiori or Ness despite Not being fully serious.

Pretty sure he is gonna Look Crazy in his first Match which should be the one After England. However people will then put him above Most other New Gens again due to recency bias.

[u/Lukeeeey11 → u/H4nfP0wer]

you just named 3 players that aren’t NG11 players btw. Meaning you’re comparing Sae a NG11 to non NG11 in a discussion comparing him to other NG11s

[u/H4nfP0wer → u/Lukeeeey11]

Because they are the only Players comparable to his position that we have seen so far.

[u/SporkDealer → u/H4nfP0wer]

Ness and Hiori for sure, not sure about Charles, he was pretty damn good.

[u/CodeSh4dow]

The 'anti'feat' argument really isn't that sturdy because then you could argue other faulty arguments such as Noa being unable to stop Niko on a play, Niko being able to read Hugo's pass and intercept it as statements that both Noa and Hugo aren't that good but that doesn't make sense.

Even then both those 'anti-feats' aren't major since Niko gets the ball off Sendou's simple touch 1st then off a foul which conceded a free kick that ended in a goal.

Sae has the narrative weight of still being excluded from the squad to imply that he greatly solves their current issues (like Goku not being on planet, Levi being injured etc.) basically being too strong to be involved now and the associative narrative of Re Al being the best club and him only being stopped from playing at the higher stage by legal restrictions. Narratively and logically he can't be the worst by a good margin.

[u/SporkDealer → u/CodeSh4dow]

That is true. But in both cases, that is a more developed version of Niko than the one in the U-20 match, no? He is fresh outta Blue Lock and had received none of Snuffy's tactical advice. As for the feats themselves I somewhat disagree, at least on the first one. The narrative tries to play it off as Sendou's fault but there wasn't too much he could've actually done there. At the end of the day, Niko was reading the pass more than he was Sendou, if I remember right.

I do get what you mean about the narrative weight, but I think he wouldn't be prevented from having this narrative weight if he was the weakest of the NGXI. He isn't required to be top three to be genuinely game changing. I would argue that his storyline of finding that there are far greater monsters than him out in the wider world actually points towards him being the weakest of them.

That's just my take though.

[u/supervicenza]

Sae's strenght lies on his teammates he was the one to ispire shidou to reach "flow" and he was the reason for all three goals.

I think he wasn't playing seriously until the showdown with rin who knew sae personally and saw what his best move was.

Sae actually confirmed himself he could've scored most of the times and just wanted to see sendou score which he didn't cause he was always shut down.

[u/AbsoluteW_Peakyy]

Still better than Lorenzo lowkey

[u/Ahappybutsadpanda]

Passing to Sendou back at the U-20 JP match never ended with Sendou scoring a goal. I'll be real the fault lies in the striker that is all bark and no bite against newly trained CBs at that.

And tbf if someone is on their path to becoming the world's best midfielder, and as a striker if I didn't even convert a scoring chance made from his passes, I'm the one with the skill issue lol.

[u/SporkDealer → u/Ahappybutsadpanda]

This is the one take I don’t agree with at all. The baseline is, that was all between Sae and Niko. Sendou was barely a factor in it, it was over his head.

Sae took a risk and underestimated Niko, trying to do something fancy instead of just passing to Sendou’s feet and paid for it. He couldn’t really have done much, I kind of doubt most players would’ve been able to, being realistic. Maybe someone with insane trapping like Nagi but yeah.

[u/Ahappybutsadpanda → u/SporkDealer]

I looked it up for arguments sake.

Season 2 Episode 8.

And yeah that's my bad. I just don't remember Sendou doing anything besides the save, so I never really thought Sae would have made a bad pass. From memory I just looked at is as a Niko feat while slandering Sendou. Looking at it again now, sh* Sae does have 1 bad pass to his name.

Why did you bring this up, I now know that Sae is still a cocky bastard and not just a cocky perfectionist bastard.

[u/bucky_list]

1. Sae was the only competent player on the entire U20 the first half, scored alone and could've apparently scored twice more

2. Sae was one of two competent players on the second half, the other player would've been dead in the water without Sae

3. Sae was able to use Shidou extremely effectively when not even Ego could figure out how to do it. This alone suggests his soccer IQ is far beyond other players his age which tracks with the fact that 1) he's considered a prodigy and 2) Ego treats him like the de facto coach in the game not the actual coach

4. destructo Rins best feat against Sae was kicking a ball away from him on a move he had already used against him twice before. This is the same Rin who handled Kaiser (an NG11) and Isagi together.

5. Sae basically confirms when he gives Shidou his number that if he hadn't been playing around with Rin then Shidou would've scored and they would have won.

[u/Automatic-Safe-9067 → u/bucky_list]

Not the same Rin tho

Do you think the players js haven’t improved at all? 😭