Napoli’s Eljif Elmas and Enis Bardhi, who plays for the La Liga side Levante, are the two shining stars in the national team of North Macedonia captained by 36-year-old Goran Pandev, who played throughout his career for big clubs like Inter, Napoli and Lazio.
However, while Pandev is approaching the end of his career, Bardhi is 25 years old and therefore his prime is shortly ahead of him, while Elmas will turn 21 in September. Considering this, Elmas has clearly the potential to become the best North Macedonian player in history.
The 20-year-old central midfielder moved to Fenerbahçe from his youth club Rabotnicki Skopje in 2017 and, in the summer transfer window of 2019, made a big step forward by joining Napoli. This is currently his first season in one of the greatest leagues in Europe.
In this tactical analysis in the form of a scout report, we will look at the qualities of Elmas and investigate his tactics and abilities to understand whether he is ready to step up and be a regular starter for Gennaro Gattuso’s side.
Data analysis
To start off this analysis, we will use data to get a first feeling for the type of player that Elmas is. To do so, I took the statistics of all central midfielders who played at least 700 minutes in the current Serie A season (until 28 June). Of the 97 players who satisfied this requirement (including Elmas with 772 minutes), I took in the average value for these players and compared it to Elmas’s value. The main idea behind this section is not to identify if he is better or worse than the average Serie A midfielder. However, the data should give us a hint of what to expect from him and his tactics.
In the first graph, which can be seen below, I mixed Elmas’s ball-carrying statistics and defensive metrics to get a first overview, while in the second graph of this section we will purely focus on his passing. Note that all stats below are the average values per 90 minutes for a better comparison.
Here, we can see a clear trend as he makes more successful dribbles (1.98), wins above-average offensive duels (3.26) and also his stats for touches in the box (1.87) and progressive runs (2.68) are quite impressive. On the other hand, he frequently commits fouls (2.22), doesn’t make many interceptions (3.5) and wins fewer defensive duels (3.26) than the average.
At first glance, it seems that he is quite offensive-minded for a central midfielder (mainly plays at number eight in Napoli’s 4-3-3) and not too solid when it comes to defending. Next, we will look at his passes. Note here that Elmas plays on average 48.85 passes with a success rate of 89.5 percent, while the average Serie A midfielder completes 84.57 percent of 41.95 attempted passes.
This time, Elmas only has a higher value when it comes to forward passes with 12.71, while in all other categories he is below-average. The difference in long passes is especially huge. However, this graph shows that Elmas is not necessarily the man in Napoli’s tactics who is always responsible for the progression of the ball.
Positioning and movements
Now, we will start with the actual analysis of the tactics of the 20-year-old and his role in Gattuso’s system. Basically, there are three other central midfielders on Napoli who played in this season at least 700 minutes: Allan, Piotr Zielinski and Fabián Ruiz, while Diego Demme and Stanislav Lobotka alternated as defensive midfielders in front of the back line of four.
While Allan is an incredible powerhouse, Ruiz is clearly the one with the best technical abilities. Zielinski and Elmas are all rounders with more strengths in the offence. In terms of positioning, we can rarely see Elmas in such a deep position like in the example below. The only situations in which the North Macedonian is that deep and outside of the opposition’s block is when they sat back deeper and Napoli overcame, for example, the first pressing phase. However, even then, Elmas is not always that deep as he is usually positioned in the half-space between the lines of the opponent’s block as we will see at a later stage in this scout report.
One main reason for his higher positioning is that already in the first phase of Napoli’s build-up, we can see how the 20-year-old midfielder pushes forward to be positioned near the single striker. The reason for that is that Dries Mertens, who is the regular centre-forward, only stands at 5’7” and therefore can’t win that many aerial duels and rarely uses his body to shield off the opponent. On the other side, Elmas stands at 6 ‘0 “ and is then the target for long balls when Napoli aren’t able to play out from the back with short passes.
In the following image, we have an example of a situation in which the North Macedonian is positioned quite high for a central midfielder to stretch the opposition first and receive a long ball at a later time.
However, as we will see later in this tactical analysis, Elmas is not permanently positioned that high. It is not possible to explain his positioning and movements throughout a game with a few sentences simply because he is incredibly flexible. He is often positioned high during the build-up, which then leads to dangerous situations in a later stage of the attack, where he makes deep runs as he is already positioned in a high area (as we can see below). However, in other moments, he is positioned deeper to help his team when it comes to circulating the ball. We will dive deep into his passing game at a later stage of this tactical analysis.
Basically, Elmas’s flexibility paired with his vision and understanding of the game is clearly one of the main aspects of his game and what makes him so interesting. In the shot below, we have an example of a situation in which he uses his understanding of the game to run into the vacant space, which resulted from the movement of Brescia’s right-back that had to step forward to press Lorenzo Insigne.
Also, the above example shows one of the areas in which he typically positions before he starts such runs: the half-space. He likes to position in this area of the field since he can either run behind the defence by going into the wide-area as we saw above or move toward the centre of the pitch.
Even though Elmas is not an outstandingly tall player (6’0”), compared to the likes of Insigne (5’4”), Zielinski (5’11”), Mertens (5’7”), Hirving Lozano (5’9”) and Matteo Politano (5’7”), he ranks among Napoli’s tallest offensive players alongside Ruiz (6’2”), Arkadiusz Milik (6’1”) and José Callejón (6’0”).
Furthermore, Mertens is more frequently the central striker, but unlike Milik and Ruiz, he doesn’t often join the offensive players in the box ahead of a cross. Due to that, we can often see how Elmas is positioned in the half-space and as soon as the ball is played wide (in the example below by himself) he moves into the penalty area to give the player in the wide-area an additional crossing option.
To conclude, Elmas gets from Gattuso the freedom that he needs to purely exploit his understanding of the game, as shown by the fact that he positions himself in different spaces around the pitch. While the other central midfielders also move into different areas of the pitch and are rarely limited to one area, it is astonishing to see how often Elmas recognizes free spaces.
Intelligent usage of his body offensively and defensively
In this part of the scout report, we will analyse how the North Macedonian makes use of his body as he is a bit taller than the average central midfielder. Additionally, his muscle strength and body shape are central aspects to understand his style of play.
First of all, Elmas clearly needs to work on his aerial ability since he only wins 15.38 percent of his aerial duels. However, his involvement in aerial duels, which sits at 1.52 per 90 minutes, is the highest across all four Napoli’s central midfielders. Considering that Elmas has the fewest minutes in this season, this statistics tell us that he is among the main targets for Napoli’s long balls. Still, if he can improve in this category, his teammates surely will try to find him even more frequently with long balls like the one in the situation below. In this example, he only slightly touches the ball with the top of his head to direct the ball to a teammate behind him.
When it comes to dribbles or offensive duels, Elmas in general often tries to bring his body between the ball and the opponent to shield off the other player. Especially when he receives the ball with the back to the opposing goal, meaning that he will likely get pressed from behind, he often uses his body to protect the ball. He then tries to turn around the opponent to get away from them.
Below we can see a perfect example of this concept, as Elmas receives a throw-in while Marcelo Brozović puts pressure on him from behind. Elmas uses his body to shield off the Croatian, while turning to get past him. Brozović has no option but to foul the North Macedonian.
Now, we will look at Elmas’ role in the defensive tactics of Napoli and how he uses his physical strength and height in this phase of the game.
When Napoli put pressure on their opponents higher up the pitch, Elmas is the central midfielder who is positioned high to support the central forward or follows the opposition’s deepest central midfielder. Elmas is not incredibly strong when it comes to defensive duels but always shows a lot of aggression, which makes him perfect for this role as his main task is to give the opposition’s deep midfielder (in the example below, Brozović) little time on the ball. In the following shot, we can see how Elmas follows Brozović to give him little time to think as soon as he receives the ball.
Basically, Elmas is offensively stronger compared to his defensive qualities. He needs to work on his positioning during the defensive phase as he is sometimes positioned in the wrong spot or gets lured out of position easily by an opponent.
Also, he wins only 48.28 percent of his defensive duels, which is below-average (55.24 percent for the average Serie A midfielders with at least 700 minutes in this season). One main reason behind it is his poor body positioning in some situations. Without his long legs, which heavily help him in defensive duels, he would have a lower success rate. If he can work more on his positioning during the defensive phase, which is often poor due to his wrongful body orientation, he could exploit his long legs even more when engaging in defensive duels.
Below, we can see an example of a situation in which he makes usage of both his size and long legs to reach the ball and stop the attempted dribble by the opponent.
Overall, his size and physical strength help him during the defensive phase (his aggression is important too during that part of the game). Also, when he receives the ball with the back to his opponent, he often uses his strength to shield off the opponent.
He will have to work on aerial duels and additionally improve his positioning during the defensive phase, which also badly influences his body orientation ahead of defensive duels. Anyways, we have to keep in mind that he is only 20 years old and that these are areas in which players tend to improve massively in their early 20s. Also, it is his first season in a high-level league, and we can see that he still needs time to adjust to this new competition. In the following and final section of this tactical analysis, we will look at his passing game.
His passing game
In this final part of the scout report, we will look at the passes of the 20-year-old central midfielder. Of course, also in this section, his positioning will once again be an important aspect in determining the areas from which Elmas attempts his passes.
As mentioned before in this tactical analysis, Elmas is often the central midfielder who is positioned quite high during Napoli’s build-up to stretch the opposition vertically and create space in the centre of the pitch for his teammates. However, there are also situations in which he drops deeper to help his teammates progress the ball with short passes. In these situations, he mostly links up with the full-back as we can see in the example below.
As we noticed when we looked at his passing stats, he plays more passes than the average Serie A central midfielder but fewer progressive passes, final third passes and passes to the penalty area. The reason for that is that he takes up two central duties for Napoli during possession: playing short and simple passes to keep the ball (as we can see above) and positioning himself inside the opposition’s block to have link-up plays with his teammates, as we can see in the situation below.
In both moments, Elmas does not play extremely special passes that would show up in the data as, for example, progressive passes. However, they are still important parts of Napoli’s tactics. Again, we can see that his role is quite variable and that he helps his team in different ways.
Below is an example from Napoli’s game against SPAL. Elmas positioned himself inside the opposition’s block, something that he does often and that allowed him to combine with Insigne when he received the ball. Also, this situation shows his decent awareness and technical abilities.
One thing which clearly stands out when we look at his passing game is that he is confident in situations like the two above, where he has a little interplay with a teammate and he doesn’t care that much about the fact that his opponents try to put pressure on him. However, he needs to work on his long passes since these are not always accurate.
We have below an example in which he detected the movement of his teammate and the huge gap in the defensive structure of the opposition. However, since his through ball was imprecise, the receiver couldn’t receive and go straight towards the goal (blue lines). This forced his teammate to slow down, allowing the defender to get back into action (white lines).
To conclude, the North Macedonian midfielder often has interplays with one of Napoli’s full-backs during the first stage of the build-up, something that allows him to overcome the opposition’s press. As soon as his team reaches the final third, he is mostly positioned in the space between the lines to receive the ball. He then connects with his teammates to create dangerous combinations with short passes and explosive movements.
Conclusion
Overall, the two central aspects that make Elmas so interesting for Gattuso are his variability and his ability to combine physical strength with technical skills. These are also the reasons why he has recorded decent values for dribbles, offensive duels and progressive runs, as well as use his physical strength to shield off the opponent while getting forward. However, if he works on the ability to win aerial duels, his defensive positioning and his accuracy on long-range passes, he could be even more flexible and help his team even more. One thing which I would want to note here is that for his national team, Elmas plays in a different role as he has more offensive freedom. This often leads to him having more goalscoring situations, as he already scored four goals in 18 games for the senior squad of North Macedonia.
The 20-year-old midfielder has a contract with Napoli until 2024 and has the potential to become a regular starter in the upcoming season. Ruiz, Allan and Zielinski are three teammates that play in the same position as Elmas and are all around their career peak, which complicates things for Elmas in terms of getting consistent playing time. However, Gattuso showed that he trusts Elmas by letting him play quite frequently after the coronavirus-forced break.
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