Angelica Soffia is an international Italian player who is 22 years old and plays for Milan at the moment. She started her career at Verona from 2016 to 2018 before moving to Roma where she stayed until 2022 and improved a lot as a player. This last summer, she joined the Rossonere to help them reach a top spot in the Serie A Women and reinforce the right flank of the team, knowing that she mainly plays as a right-back.

She also played with the different national team categories until reaching the senior category in 2021. Soffia is a very talented player who hasn’t reached her full potential yet but she has shown so far that she can be one of the best Italian right-backs very soon given her abilities, intelligence and technique.

In this tactical analysis scout report, we will focus on exploring Soffia’s main characteristics, her possible positions, strengths and weaknesses as well as how she can adapt to Milan’s tactics and help them reach their seasonal goals.

Positions and roles

Soffia plays in most positions on the right flank including right-back, wing-back, right-wing — and she can also play in midfield. She has some solid physical abilities that allow her to be good in duels and participate in attacks so often as she always helps with accurate early crosses towards the box. As the following pizza plot shows, Soffia is one of the best right-backs in Italy at the moment in terms of defensive duels as she wins a lot of them per match. But at the same time, she needs to work on improving other aspects of her performance such as progressive passing and goal contribution since her statistics are not the best in this regard. Being consistent in terms of offensive passing and contribution in attacks would make Soffia a more valuable player for Milan and for Italy.

Soffia has the ability to pass accurately and especially cross very well towards the box. She will, therefore, need to become consistent on this aspect and improve her statistics progressively. In this regard, playing alongside a talented player like Valentina Bergamaschi would help her become more dangerous and effective upfront as it can make her a more determined player in attack. Moreover, working on enhancing her physical strength and dribbling skills would help her a lot in winning more offensive duels and in becoming more impactful offensively.

At Milan, she has been used as a wing-back in the 3-5-2 and the 3-4-3 formations so far while she played as a right-back in the 4-4-2 and the 4-3-3 formations at Roma and with Italy. Therefore, it is safe to say that Soffia can adapt to various formations and can perform well either as a right-back or as a wing-back.

Playmaking and goalscoring abilities

In terms of playmaking abilities, Soffia can be a very useful player on the right wing whenever she advances, since she often relies on her accurate early crosses to serve strikers or players coming from the back. If she focuses even more on improving this aspect by diversifying her solutions and alternating between crosses, penetrations and through passes, she will certainly help a lot in the offensive phase.

But at the same time, Soffia will have to work more on her acceleration and agility in order to be more efficient in offensive duels and be able to surpass opponents with more ease, which would make her more unpredictable and more dangerous in the final third. The following example highlights Soffia’s great vision and crossing precision as it shows how she served her teammate who was coming from behind with an accurate cross that met her at the adequate spot.

Moreover, Soffia showed that she can be dangerous when she penetrates internally from the right flank even if she is not the fastest player. She can dribble well and get past opponents and what is impressive is that she can also shoot very well using her left foot. In fact, she can shoot with power and precision with her weaker foot and she proved that several times including this occasion during which she hit the crossbar with a long-range shoot using her left foot.

Soffia has also proven that she can be very efficient inside the box in terms of goalscoring and she even succeeds in exploiting complicated opportunities thanks to her acrobatic moves at times. She did a similar action against Austria when playing with her national Italian team and succeeded in scoring a beautiful volley following an accurate cross that she received and dealt with excellently thanks to a single powerful touch, putting the ball inside the net.

Such actions show that Soffia is not just a defensive right-back, she is very useful from an attacking perspective as well if given the confidence and the instructions needed to exploit her offensive skills further in the service of the team. Moreover, it would be beneficial for her and for the team if she works more on her speed and shooting from distance more often, knowing that she has the capacity to excel in this regard and serve Milan — and perhaps Italy — in the best of ways in terms of goalscoring and playmaking.

Defensive characteristics

Soffia can be considered a solid defender with fairly good physical abilities. She is hard to beat in defensive duels as she has also proven on numerous occasions that she can be decisive in preventing dangerous opportunities and saving her team from conceding goals. This means that Soffia deals well with complicated situations and especially one vs one duels.

The following picture just shows how crucial Soffia can be during counterattacks and one vs one situations. She was successful in saving her team, Roma at the time, from conceding a goal by intercepting the ball from her direct opponent a second before she strikes it. It was a risky decision but Soffia knew how to execute it since she was sure of her movement despite its difficulty. She intercepted the ball with her left foot with a jump to reach the ball before her opponent, which could have resulted in a penalty if she touched the player and not the ball. Having the courage and the correct decision-making to execute such a movement is surely a very important quality that needs to be highlighted.

In addition to her excellent abilities in these defensive duels and during key situations, Soffia often resorts to tackling in order to get out of difficult situations, knowing that these sliding tackles are often helpful on certain occasions if executed well and especially if timed well. As the following example shows, Soffia rarely makes wrong-timed tackles and most of the time she touches only the ball cleanly and elegantly. And that’s why she is remarkable in this regard and can become even better in terms of tackling if she continues like this. Even during the few games she’s played with Milan so far, Soffia has demonstrated great defensive strength and used sliding tackles successfully whenever these tackles were required.

Plus, she has always shown great mastery in terms of ball protection. She usually knows how and when to put her body forward in order to protect the ball and prevent opponents from reaching it and this helps her a lot in the different situations she encounters either in defence or in attack. And with more experience at Milan, Soffia promises to be one of the most impactful players in this team as she showed that she has a great character and willingness to improve — and, especially, determination to win, which are all excellent player characteristics.

Conclusion

Angelica Soffia has a lot of time ahead of her to keep improving and shining. She must exploit her move from Roma to Milan in the best of ways to confirm a starting spot and convince Milena Bertolini to keep calling her up for the national team, knowing that we are about to witness a World Cup very soon. Therefore, being fit and giving more than 100% in every match with Milan would serve Soffia a lot as it would help Milan and Italy reach their targets as well, knowing that Milan are in continuous challenge with some strong teams like Juventus, Roma, Inter and Fiorentina. And overall, Soffia has the potential to become Italy’s best actual right-back in the near future, alongside Valentina Bergamaschi.