How good is Fernandez-Pardo? Explosive winger can thrill like Doku

With Newcastle United signing Matias Fernandez-Pardo for £51m from Lille, Adam Bate speaks to the player's former coach to find out what makes the Belgian forward so good: "You could compare him a little bit to Jeremy Doku. He is very explosive, very fast"

There is one special quality that will have convinced Newcastle United that Matias Fernandez-Pardo can thrive in the Premier League. "He is very explosive, very fast," his former coach Arnar Vidarsson tells Sky Sports . "He has this unbelievable power."

Indeed, Vidarsson, who worked with Fernandez-Pardo at Gent prior to his move to Lille, sees similarities with another Belgian winger who has become a Premier League star. "You could compare him a little bit to Jeremy Doku. They have a similar profile," he says.

"It is that power, that speed, that ability to go past people without needing space." That Doku trademark of slowing the defender down and then suddenly speeding up? He has it too. "Matias can go past people in one or two metres because of this explosiveness."

The reason why Newcastle have been persuaded to pay £51m to bring the 21-year-old Belgium international to the Premier League is that Fernandez-Pardo has shown that he can bring goals too. He has evolved into more of a wide forward than a winger.

"In my opinion, his best position is central," says Vidarsson. "That is how he scored most of his goals and how Lille scouted him in his last season with Gent." It happened fast. He made his full league debut in March 2024 and played his last game for the club that August.

A run of eight goals in 11 games did that. "The coach started to use him as a striker. Before that, he had always been on the wing. He made a good decision because Matias started to score a lot. After that spell playing centrally, there was big interest in him."

Vidarsson's relationship with Fernandez-Pardo pre-dates that first-team breakthrough. The Icelandic coach, now working in coach development for FIFA, was responsible for talent management at Gent as well as working with the development squad there.

He remembers a quiet boy, one well supported by his family. "His relationship with his father was strong. His father was all in, basically his assistant, driving him everywhere and taking good care of him. Matias did not talk too much." He came alive on the pitch.

The young Fernandez-Pardo was a wide player for Gent's second team. It was a learning process. "His decision-making on the wing was not always the best," Vidarsson recalls. "That is something that Doku, for example, also had when he was at Anderlecht."

He caveats it by saying this was a few years ago. "Players develop. But he was going past people and not knowing when to cross, when to cut inside, when to go outside, when to find space in behind. And sometimes he did not have the mentality to run for the team."

Vidarsson puts that down to the fact that he had probably outgrown the level and was itching for the first-team opportunity that he soon seized.