Which Villarreal player is most ambidextrous?

The Spanish edition of Statsbomb put a graphic on Twitter showing a breakdown of Santi Cazorla’s passes with his left and right feet. I had been aware of the fact that fbref.com (which uses Statsbomb data) listed what % a player favored one foot over another in their passing, but it occurred to me on seeing the graphic online that Santi Cazorla had to use a combination of both feet better than most of his teammates. As it turns out, there were only four players on Villarreal’s whole roster who used their dominant foot less than 75% of the time (this is fairly normal in football and not a criticism), so here they are, the most ambidextrous men on the current Villarreal roster. (The percentage listed is for the players recorded career.)

4. Manu Trigueros 74% right footed

Coming in fourth place is Manu Trigueros. The under-appreciated creative genius has attempted 478 right footed passes, 192 left footed passes, and 31 with his head this season making him slightly less one footed this year than he has been for his cumulative career.

3. Santi Cazorla 68% right footed

Surprised to see Santi in third? Me too. The Magician and club hero has played 791 right footed passes this season to only 415 with his left, making him less right foot dominant than last season but not ambidextrous enough to be higher up our list.

2. Moi Gomez 67% right footed

By just ONE PERCENT Moi tips Santi for the runner up spot. For some context, over the last two seasons, Moi has played 1,523 with his right foot over the last two years. If just 30 more of his 2387 attempts the last two seasons had been with his left foot, he would be in third.

1. Ramiro Funes Mori 56% right footed

ALL HAIL THE VICTOR. It wasn’t even close, this was an absolute rout. It seems like Ramiro’s general indecisiveness has finally paid off for him as his inability to decide which foot to clear a ball with results in him being the most ambidextrous passer on Villarreal’s roster. Our intrepid Argentine defender is equally incompetent with both feet.

Final thoughts

I feel the need to apologize at this point to whoever read this. This stat doesn’t matter, it has no application to the effectiveness of footballers. In case you need verification for that, Lionel Messi is 92% left footed, Kevin De Bruyne is 88% right footed, Toni Kroos is 85% right footed and Thomas Muller is 85% right footed. You can be a phenomenal player and do almost everything with one foot (don’t tell your local youth coaches that). But ya know what, I’m locked in the house, I’ll take any excuse to think about sports, and hopefully some of you are in the same boat, so here’s a useless piece of statistical information for you to put in your brain.