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It’s always curious when athletes adept at two sports have to focus on one. What if the Neville brothers had focused on cricket? What if Petr Cech had stuck with ice hockey? And what if our number 12 had decided to continue with his prodigious boxing talents?
But before we get ready to rumble with our next entry, we'd like to quickly point out that 'Playmaker's 72' is not necessarily aimed at ID'ing the best footballers across the EFL - instead, it focuses on those who have enjoyed the best campaigns across the Championship, League One and League Two this season.
Fighting out of the green corner, it’s the undefeated boxing champion... Matty Stevens.
Matty Stevens had the choice of two sports as a kid: football or boxing. His grandfather, Les Stevens, was a celebrated boxer and young Matty ‘Thunder’ Stevens was an undefeated national champion at youth level.
As a natural athlete, Stevens probably would have succeeded in any sport that he chose, but he eventually settled on football where he played for Reading in his youth before moving to Barnet where he became their youngest-ever player and goal scorer.
Stevens moved to Forest Green Rovers from Peterborough in 2019, but it wasn’t until this season when the ‘Matt Attack’ strike partnership he formed with Jamille Matt began to click. Now the pair have scored over half of the Gloucestershire team’s total goals.
"He is a massive reason for the club being in this position at the moment," his manager Rob Edwards said.
"Our job now as a football club is to give him all the support he needs in his recovery, help him in every way that we can and make sure that when he comes back that he's playing League One football."
Similarly, Kane Wilson said, "Matty was incredible for us this season, one of the best sniffers of a goal as a poacher I've ever come across."
The forward certainly started this season on fire, winning the August League Two Player of the Month award after scoring five times.
Although he didn’t win another POTM award, he didn’t slow down and was featured in the League Two Team of the Season award but was defeated in the running for the League Two Player of the Year trophy by teammate Wilson.
Stevens’ poaching instinct combined with his movement, clever runs, and ball control has enabled him to bag 27 goals in 42 games in all competitions this season. Without the injury, he’d have likely hit the 30-goal mark.
23 of those have come in the league, where he is only behind Newport’s Dom Telford (25) in the charts. His 23 in 37 games gives Stevens an average of 0.62 behind Telford again (0.71).
Stevens also scores important goals, no one in League Two has scored as many matchwinning goals as he has (5) and only two plays out of the top four tiers have scored more matchwinners – Michael Smith (6) and Aleksandar Mitrovic (8).
The stats and awards are impressive but the next challenge for Stevens is to recover from his injury. ACL injuries can take anywhere from six to nine months to heal so it’s likely he’ll miss the start of Forest Green Rovers’ maiden League One campaign.
The former boxer will need to call upon his fighting spirit to recover quickly and get ready for a heavyweight tussle.
😳 Matty Stevens is a machine!#WeAreFGR 💚 pic.twitter.com/Wx1PLdD52w
— Forest Green Rovers (@FGRFC_Official) July 5, 2021
Check out the articles for all of those featured so far...
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NameMathew Antony Stevens Born/Age1998-02-12(26 -yrs-old) Nationality England PositionForward (Striker) | |
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