Why data and traditional scouting should work together

This issue will be a little different from the others.

I’ll use the case of Vlahović's performances at Juventus to underline why and how Juventus management did a mistake in splashing 70+ million on him in a system that wasn’t and is not good for him, which is essentially the opposite of what you want from a plug and play striker at the top level.

Also, in doing this I try to find which is the problem for Vlahović at Juventus and why another option that suits Juventus's recruitment style - buying from the Italian Serie A in a mid to high fee range - was probably the better choice.

Let’s dive right in.

Why Vlahović to Juventus to me never made sense

You need to understand what Vlahović was at Fiorentina.

You’ll probably know he was talked about as a less impacting Haaland, at the very least in Italy. Honestly, he was very electric on the pitch, he was able to link up play pretty well and score in pretty much every possible way a striker should be able to.

His best was while running off-ball between defenders and creating the route for a good pass to break the last defending line. He would also do this type of play while battling with defenders thanks to physical elasticity and that electricity I’ve talked about which appears if you go and watch some of his Fiorentina clips on YouTube. So for these reasons, Juventus would have never been a place in which he could thrive. There are some simple reasons for that and all of them lie in what Allegri wants from his team and striker. I want to be clear here, I don’t like Allegri's managerial style or the public character he created for himself, but that doesn’t mean he cannot have a successful spell as a football coach.

But, what is that Allegri wants from the team and striker? Well if you’re used to Allegri's last season of Juventus before being sacked and the last one you already know he wants a team that controls possession in a very safe way and then creates some magic with individual brilliance, and/or, he wants his team to defend with a low block and then go on the counter.

It seems good for Vlahović in theory, but it is not because of the actual state of the Juventus squad.

Juventus’ style requires the striker to do a lot of work for the rest of the team. The striker needs to often wins a lot of duels in an isolated situation, hold the ball as much as needed, and let the rest of the team arrive to provide support for the action. This is often difficult for the striker because it requires the ability to work with the ball in a static situation while being with the back to the net. This is Vlahović's worst skill, in the clips on YouTube you can see Vlahović at Fiorentina was never static, and always touched the ball to keep the flow going, not to stop the play and wait for others. For example: already at Fiorentina, he was destroyed by Bremer in a game against Torino exactly playing the game with the back to the net and with Bremer attacking him, giving him hard time moving. Torino furthermore was and is a team - under Jurić - that prefers to give you a foul than to give you the possibility of doing what you want.

So from the very first moment, I had a lot of doubts. Allegri in this Juventus doesn't have his safe outlet to which he can say “launch the ball to him” in case of need like Mandžukić was during his first spell.

Vlahović is not, and probably will never be that, for Allegri or anyone else.

Why the debate about where Vlahović touches the ball is not enough

On Italian Twitter, I’ve often come across the thought that Vlahović struggles come from the fact that he’s playing his touches lower on the pitch now than at Fiorentina. But that’s simply not true.

You see here that the average height of touches for Vlahović didn’t change much over time. Of course, you could argue that 2 to 3 meters are important in a game of randomness and complexity like football.

But still, this doesn’t explain Vlahović's struggle on its own since is not a significant difference.

The change in Vlahović’s touches over time

But if we go deeper we note something that adds up.

We here have a lot of data pushed to your face, so let’s try to describe things bit by bit. This visualization serves you to see where a player touches the ball per 90 in each zone, but it adds the variation of touches from different seasons. In the title, you see which seasons are compared for each one, and on the right, you have the bar that explains to you what kind of difference in volume there is. Unfortunately, the ticks are little, but they are:

• White = 0, and therefore no difference.

• Red = 1, 2, 3, so there’s an increase in volume.

• Blue = -1, -2, -3, which means there’s a decrease.

The first season mentioned in the title is the one that is compared to the second. So for example, and to sum all the things up we can see in the first and in the fourth graph how Vlahović - this season - touches between 0 and 1 times more in the middle third of the pitch than in the 20/21 season at Fiorentina and the half of last season played at Juventus.

Furthermore, from last season's half at Juventus to this season he’s touching fewer balls in the box and right before it. This indeed means he’s touching balls a little bit lower, but we’re talking in the range of 1 touch per zone.

So again, nothing that explains his struggle on its own, but which is completing the picture.

Why the debate over his lack of passing ability is not enough too

In Italian Twitter, another thing that is often brought up against Vlahović and even in Juventus Stadium - yes, I live in Turin - is that he’s not good at passing the ball.

First of all, I would argue that is difficult to pass the ball every time in a perfect way when you play 90 minutes recycling long balls with someone a 1,90m tall man pushing your back every time. But going a little bit further, as we have done until now I can show you that over time Vlahović’s passing profile has been quite the same with a little different this season - again.

You see two radars for every season. Every single left radar, makes you see the number of passes and the number of successful passes for the angle. On the right one instead, you see the average length for the angle of passes - with the limit being 15m - while the color indicates the number of passes for that angle. We can notice a couple of things, Vlahović always missed a lot of passes, but Vlahović always connected a lot of passes only with the wingers.

But what is interesting is to see how this season he’s constantly and almost only connecting every time with the left winger, which is his most played pass.

I think this is caused by two things:

1. Kostić and Chiesa play in that position, which are both players that Vlahović knows well from Serbia and Fiorentina times.

2. Vlahović is left footed so if you think the center - Vlahović position - as if he was facing the bottom of the image, you have Vlahović with his back to the net and so his left foot is perfectly placed to pass the ball to defenders or the left winger.

How to resolve things?

So now we have a complete picture - in my opinion - of what’s wrong.

Vlahović plays in a team that relies a lot on his worst skill, and a team with a style that struggles to dominate teams and create a lot of chances. This translates into him having more touches in the middle third and a lower height of his touches, even though both of these things are a bit for both.

But all of this adds up together and create a situation in which Vlahović can almost only relies on his preferred foot to get out of these situations, which happens to be almost always a short pass to the wingers or a longer ball to the defenders or midfielders back. This relates to the stretched nature of Allegri’s team which is not able to support a fast counter because often they win the ball back very low on the pitch and need to get up the field by an intricate phase of buildup and possession unless is for Rabiot, Fagioli or Di Maria brilliancy.

So what could happen to resolve things?

I think either Vlahović goes to another team or Juventus changes their playing style to accommodate the Serb - and Chiesa too since it seems he’s another player which is not thriving under this Allegri spell.

Why Juventus’ scouting failed from the start and scouting is fundamental

Juventus’ as we all know by now, is probably been the worst-run club in the world in the last 4 to 5 years.

No wonder this Vlahović transfer is another one that made little sense, not only on the pitch but also on financial terms. I want to remind you Juventus already had financial problems last season and spent a record transfer fee for a January transfer in Italy.

But what’s worse to me is that the transfer seems done based on who’s doing great and not what this team needs to suit the idea of the manager, a manager that should stay for 4 years in total. This is nothing new, Juventus finds themselves with only Alex Sandro as a pure left-back while having sold Pellegrini in the Summer, and acquired Cambiaso only to loan him to Bologna and ask him back in January to receive a no in response. Juventus doesn’t have a single left-footed center-back in the entire squad and the only one who can play as a left-side center-back and play the ball is Danilo.

Again, Juventus has Rabiot, Pogba, and Locatelli who are all starters and play their best as a left-sided central-midfielder. To finish it off, Juventus in the summer loaned out Rovella to Monza, to bring in Paredes who in the last week got benched by Barranchea, while the Italian is playing his second full Serie A season as a starter and third in total.

Nowadays scouting is fundamental to create revenue, to create marketing opportunities as Mitoma for Brighton expansion in Asia shows, but most of all to compete in a more and more difficult environment, in Italy it seems the league condition still let the high revenue teams have a big advantage over the competition, even though teams like Inter and Roma have an incredible amount of debt over their shoulders.

But even in Serie A, the teams that pull good scouting and enough money together are rising or doing pretty well in the last years if we look at the amount of money they spend compared to last decade's dominant Juventus: Milan, Napoli, Atalanta - even though they’re not as good as two years ago - and lately Lazio.

To make it works nonetheless there’s the need to work from top to bottom in the same direction as an orchestra.

Extra: Who Juventus should have bought in my opinion instead of Vlahović

To close the piece.

As I’ve said, Juventus needed a really specific skillset and often they recruit players that played in Serie A, even Milik was previously in Serie A at Napoli. At the time Juventus was focused on young players and players with high ceilings.

To me, in that window, the transfer that made the most sense was Scamacca to Juventus.

Scamacca is a towering guy, with great ability in winning duels, holding the ball with his massive physique and strength. Not only that, he’s technically gifted and pretty good at scoring, but all of this costed half the fee paid for Vlahović. Now I’m not sure Scamacca would’ve done better or would’ve been incredible at Juventus, but is also true that he connected well with all the attacking potential of Sassuolo at the time, enhancing the ability of players arriving from deeper positions, similar to Rabiot or Fagioli I’d say.

His heat map from last season also shows he has an average height a little lower than Vlahović which could also mean he would be nearer the rest of the team in many situations.

In the end his passing profile:

He too misses a fair amount of passes, but he spread the passes on a wide range of players, positions, and directions. He didn’t have a clear player he would always and exclusively pass to, and we see when connecting with defenders and wingers he had a really short length of passes. Which of course could be because of him as much of his teammate’s positioning, but still is something worth noticing.

So to me, Scamacca would’ve made more sense, for a wide range of reasons.

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