Depth of Talent: Giacomo Raspadori
At the age of nine, Giacomo Raspadori was admitted to the Sassuolo youth academy, after a year with the local club Progresso. Undoubtedly one of Sassuolo’s academy’s top graduates, the Italian striker made his professional debut in a 3–1 defeat against Atalanta on 26th May 2020. Since breaking into the first team in De Zerbi’s era, He has racked up well over 80 appearances across all competitions, tallying 18 goals and 9 assists.
Player Profile:
Date of Birth: Feb 18, 2000 (22 years old)
Nationality: Italian
Position: Striker
Height: 1.72 meters
Preferred foot: Right.
Performances:
Dropping deep and engaging
Wide Areas: Raspadori is a right-footed forward who can play up-front on his own or alongside a partner who, in regards to this season, has to be the big and elegant Gianluca Scamacca. Giacomo is a reliable runner who can press, start runs forward or back, pin the defense with his high pitch start, and then use his speed and agility to drop deep and softly handle the ball, It all contributes to the team’s effort to break up the opposition’s compactness, leaving vacated areas that the wide wingers may anticipate as excellent assets to create a difference. He’s a great space generator.
Central Areas: Although he more than makes up for the team’s play style due to his finishing abilities, Giacomo has always proven his good control and soft first touch in traping difficult balls while he was under pressure. He is regarded as a great distributor because of his great timing in switching the ball from one side to another or laying off balls to wide attackers the team acquires. His presence in the playmaking phase can be clearly seen in that particular game against Juventus when he unleashed a good performance in setting up his teammates up front or generating good quality goal-scoring opportunities for himself. In that game, Sassuolo would break the deadlock as Raspadori linked up with Berardi to only find himself in a difficult position to shoot but still scored a fantastic goal to give Sassuolo a well-deserved goal after such a good fluidity and accuracy in passing, as shown in the video below;
Raspadori was outstanding throughout the game and should not be appreciated for his technical abilities but also for his intelligence and tactical awareness. He showed an excellent ability to connect between lines in the role of a Trequerista at the center of an aggressive possession structure. The next paragraph will go into further detail on his tactical roles and off-the-ball movements.
Raspadori may be conceived to play in the position of a 9, but it appears that he may contribute more if deployed as a 10 who frequently enters the penalty area.
“He is not only good in the penalty area but when he starts to run the game he does it as a true No 10” His former coach, De Zerbi, said.
Off-the-ball movement
Statistics show that players only truly possess the ball for three minutes on average, which only serves to emphasize that a player has more to offer the team’s success throughout the remaining eighty-seven minutes of play than while he is in possession of the ball. Therefore, it may not be a smart idea to ignore a player’s off-ball movements whenever aiming to evaluate his presence on the field. In order to get a complete evaluation, we will analyze Raspadori’s mobility both when defending and attacking (How is he positioning himself in the final third?).
Giacomo’s defensive contributions to his team’s ball recovery efforts throughout the course of the season were obviously above average. Applying pressure on the opponent, who is receiving or carrying the ball, on less than 14 occasions per game has to rank him 24th when compared to attacking midfielders and wingers. Roughly winning an aerial duel mostly due to his physical appearance; Although he is not an aerial outlet, he has a lot of physical power that may remind you of Sergio Aguero’s receiving the ball and using the shape of his body to cover it. Tackling appears to be a pointless metric to measure the defensive abilities of a player but it is worth mentioning that Giacomo was averaging 1.12 tackles per match.
Pinning the opponent’s defensive line and then dropping to receive a progressive or short one is something that Raspadori truly shines in doing. That was the process description but what about the execution; Let me tell you that it is even better. In the video below, I take on an example against Juventus, Raspadori appears all of a sudden to establish himself as an option that makes it easy for the midfielders to progress the ball towards the opponent’s Box.
Once more, Giacomo tricked the Juventus midfielder into pressing Traore, setting him free. He then took possession of the ball, drove forward, and lined himself up for a nice shooting position, but the result wasn’t what he had anticipated.
Raspadori’s movement skill-set is very varied as he does not only attack the central space, but he often hits the channels and runs wide.
Finishing abilities
Since we are evaluating a striker, thoughts about the number of goals he has scored naturally arise. This season, Raspadori played 36 games for his home side US.Sassuolo; scored 10 goals out of 8.07 expected goals and provided 5 assists from a 4.40 expected Assists. One significant improvement to note, though, is that Giacomo has become more of a dual-threat player than he was the season before, he’s providing more assists than he has ever done.
We listed the number of goals, but what about the quantity and locations of the shots required to score those goals? These shots are included in the chart below along with their outcomes (Goal/No Goal).
As we can see from the plot, Giacomo scored four goals from outside the penalty area, two of which occurred against Empoli and Spezia, respectively, using the same set of maneuvers; crochet followed by a wide-angle shot. Take a look at the video below.
Scoring goals is important, but doing it consistently is more crucial. Let’s identify how consistent Raspadori is. Rspadori started the season by scoring a goal in Sassuolo’s win against Sampdoria then went into 14 goalless chart below makes it easy to track Raspadori’s goalscoring ability on a consistent level.s streaks that ended against Spezia as he netted two times, another crucial goal against Lazio. he continued to score goals but not on a regular basis. The chart below makes it easy to track Raspadori’s goalscoring ability on a fixture basis.
My favorite Raspadori goal came against Hellas Verona, where he displayed excellent control in a small area, quickness, and the ability to set up a shot in the box that led to a goal. He’s really hard to contain!
Areas of improvement
Raspadori has just physical boundaries. He needs to find alternative methods and strategies to deal with defenders because, at 1.72 m, he has no chance of competing in aerial duels. He has always been dispossessed by quick center backs rather than taller ones, therefore despite his physical weakness, I think he’ll more than makes up for it by developing his speed and explosiveness as well as his shooting efficiency to maximize the potential of his well-half-turn reception.
The Italian has everything he needs to succeed: an ideal setting, brilliant teammates (Berardi, Scamacca…), and a promising coach.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, the young Italian is more than a natural winger and possesses a precise finishing touch that gets better with each new campaign. He also possesses tactical acumen and technical proficiency which makes him a target for many Serie A and Premier League teams, including Westham United that have already submitted an offer to land the Italian striker, while Juventus are reluctant to splash big money on Dybala’s replacement.
Bibliography
Data via: FBRef, StatsBomb, Understat, Transfermarkt
Videos: Serie A
Graphs: dahbielmehdi, Average Rolling, mplsoccer
