The Hidden Value of Reception Skills

The Problem with Juventus

This year watching my team – Juventus – has been really painful. I trusted Motta would bring a change, and he did, but offensively the team struggled, and actually still does under Tudor. It's probably a thing that has to do with the quality and characteristics of players in the team and what is asked from them.

Throughout the season, I couldn't avoid noticing that Juventus' ball circulation was painfully slow and restrained. Meanwhile, when watching Barcelona, I could see players making passes effortlessly. Why use Barcelona as a comparison? Well, Thiago Motta played for Barça for some seasons and was clearly influenced by this experience, as Bologna and Juventus employed principles of positional play under him.

Yet Juventus' circulation was so slow and difficult that it gave opponents time to retreat into a low block almost always, whether after regaining possession or not. Add to this the lack of 1v1 talent and/or offensive link-up play in the team, plus the tendency of Italian teams to accept defending in a low block, and you have a significant part of Juventus' season explained.

The Missing Skill: Functional Reception

But what causes this difference? In my analysis, it comes down to a specific skill that's largely missing in the Juventus squad: the ability to receive the ball effectively.

What exactly do I mean by "receiving well"? At minute 4:40 of the video below, you can see Casado receive the ball with his body already positioned and moving to break the opponent's press. He's essentially beating a player in a 1v1 situation simply through how he receives the ball. This technical skill allows him to immediately play vertically and advance possession, speeding up the entire attacking sequence.

In standard datasets, this skill is difficult to capture. Typical data might simply record "reception" and its possession value. But there are nuances that matter tremendously:

• Sometimes you receive and maybe do backwards action or lose the ball

• Sometimes you receive but immediately pass without holding the ball (which might not register as a reception in some datasets) and we recognize this as first time pass

Methodology: Measuring Reception Quality

To quantify this skill, I developed a specialized approach. I analyzed receptions that were followed by vertical actions by the same player (defined as passes or movements within a 120-degree range from perfect vertical) and measured the value of those subsequent actions. This allowed me to create rankings based on both frequency and effectiveness.

The Elite Reception Teams

Looking at the data, the 20 teams with the highest number of outfield players in the top 100 per position group reveal a clear pattern:

Notice something striking? These teams are either among the best in their respective leagues or are managed by coaches influenced by Ajax/Barcelona/Spain football philosophy for the most part. They're more or less successful teams, suggesting that effective ball control actually is linked with players quality and then team’s.

And Juventus? They had only 3 players in this elite category this season.

Barcelona: The Reception Masters

In developing this analysis, I was particularly influenced by Barcelona's midfielders. Remarkably, De Jong, Pedri, Casado, and Eric Garcia are all classified as CDMs in the top 100 for normalized actions following receptions.

They are not in the top 10 ranking by pure volume of these actions tough:

Juventus’ captain ranks 7th, but the challenge is that with those actions, he only ranked 70th among the 930 players (with 1000+ minutes) in terms of value created.

When we shift to measuring value added from these reception-following actions:

Three of those four Barcelona players remain in the top 100 for value creation: De Jong ranks 9th, Pedri 14th, and Eric Garcia 88th. (you need to add one to the index number as the first in the index is 0 and not 1)

Beyond Barcelona: Consistent Patterns

This pattern holds true beyond Barcelona. I conducted the same analysis with Bayern Munich and PSG players:

The pattern is consistent: successful possession-dominant teams invariably feature players skilled in functional reception.

Recruitment Implications

The implications for recruitment are clear: if you want to control matches through possession, you need players who can receive the ball functionally and exploit that advantage to create value. This provides a critical lens for talent identification that goes beyond standard metrics.

For Juventus specifically, this analysis suggests prioritizing players with elite reception skills in the upcoming transfer windows. Interestingly, Barcelona has been trying to offload one such player for some time now and I always thought he was the one to purchase from Ajax instead of De Ligt. Unfortunately I don’t think he’s available for 99% of teams.

The Bottom Line

If you want to play dominant football, you need to recruit players with elite reception skills. The data confirms what the eye test suggests: the ability to receive, orient, and progress the ball in a single fluid motion is a fundamental building block of modern possession football.

For Juventus to evolve under Tudor or any future manager, addressing this specific technical deficiency should be a recruitment priority when considering attackers. Buy players with these capabilities, and you'll have a simpler life on the pitch.