David Moyes hailed West Ham’s “maverick” Lucas Paqueta, admitting: ‘He drives me mad sometimes - but he’s incredible!’
Paqueta was the star of the show as West Ham beat German side Freiburg 2-1 away from home on Thursday night to make it two wins out of two in this season’s Europa League and seize control of Group A.
The Brazilian opened the scoring with a superb towering header at the start of a man-of-the-match display, with Nayef Aguerd earning all three points in the second-half after Rolland Sallai had levelled for the hosts.
“Lucas was terrific,” Moyes said. “He drives me mad sometimes but everybody who watched him would have said: ‘This player has got incredible talent’.
“There is a word that goes around, a maverick. He is that for us. It is really important we get him in and adapt to him and accept some of his things.
“He may not do things which are what I would say conventional but we are really enjoying him at the moment and he is terrific at taking the ball under pressure. But also there are moments when I say: ‘What are you doing?’”
Victory for the Hammers saw their remarkable unbeaten run in Europe extend to 17 matches, moving clear of Don Revie’s Leeds United, Bill Nicholson’s Tottenham and Pep Guardiola’s current Manchester City to set a new record by an English club.
“It’s a brilliant achievement,” Moyes added. “I’ve said to the boys that we need to keep it going. Winning the game tonight was most important.
“We played very well, especially in the opening 20 or 30 minutes. They came back which I expected. They got better and we had moments when we played very well but we mainly won the first half. We had to then be good defensively.”
