Évelyne Viens is a 27-year-old international Canadian player who has been doing extremely well this season and was therefore credited for her excellent efforts as she finished the season as the top goalscorer of the Serie A Women’s champions, Roma. What is even more impressive regarding this achievement is that Viens came to Roma last summer. This was her first season in Italy, highlighting the player’s remarkable ability to adapt quickly, have a strong personality, and have outstanding finishing traits.
Viens started her career in 2017 at Dynamo de Quebec before moving to the United States to play in the NWSL at Gotham FC for two seasons, during which she had loan periods at Paris FC and Kristianstad. Afterwards, she joined Kristianstad permanently and stayed until 2023, when she got an offer from Roma with a contract of three years.
Viens also got her first national team call-up for the 2021 SheBelieves Cup, was present in the 2020 Summer Olympics with Canada, and later in the 2023 World Cup. Viens certainly still has a lot to offer the national team, as she is actually during her peak years. She has the potential to develop even further and improve numerous aspects of her game to become a more complete attacking player.
In this tactical analysis and scout report, we will explore Viens’ attacking and playmaking traits and try to answer how she was able to finish the season as the top goalscorer in Serie A Women despite being in a very competitive league with very strong teams like Juventus, Inter Milan, Sassuolo, Fiorentina, and Milan.
The analysis will also shed light on Viens’ roles on the pitch within Roma’s tactics and identify what differentiates her from other strikers.
Position and attacking roles
As you can notice in the following heatmap, Viens covers almost the entirety of the opponent’s half in terms of positioning and movements with and without the ball. She can play as a main striker (which is her main position), a left-winger, or a right-winger. Viens has already played in these positions according to her teams’ needs, whether at Roma, Paris FC, Kristianstad, Gotham FC, or Canada.
Her ability to always be dangerous in the final third makes her very useful for any team, especially for Roma, who always need such a crucial attacking weapon.
Roma’s goalscoring machine proved that she could also be a very good assist-maker. She often helps with accurate crosses whenever she plays on the wings, as he can time these crosses well and provide key passes to her teammates inside the box.
Of course, being able to score using the right or left foot and in various situations makes Viens not just a useful player but one that will surely be requested by many big teams each season, given the impact she can make on her team from an attacking perspective.
When the opportunity comes, it is believed that Viens can also play alongside a second striker and perform extremely well with another striker, as she has remarkable tactical awareness and flexibility and can form an excellent attacking duo with that second striker. The fact that Viens is quick and agile enough, in addition to her ability to always move without the ball, can make such attacking duos easier and much more efficient with the presence of Viens.
Roma have already started trying this experiment with the use of Valentina Giacinti alongside Viens at times, and things went well for the team as the two strikers were complementary inside the box.
Goalscoring traits
Achieving a personal objective like finishing as the top goalscorer in a competitive league with very good strikers and aggressive defenders is a milestone that should not be underestimated, especially when considering that this was Viens’ first season at Roma.
With an overall average of 0.63 goals per game and 49.5% shots on target per match, Viens has been proving that she is one of the most clinical actual finishers in Europe. She has scored goals in various ways, using different techniques and from numerous positions.
Keeping the same level of accuracy and finishing mastery in front of the goal might sound easy, but it is complicated, as it requires a lot of concentration and continuous motivation to achieve more. Therefore, Viens should be very attentive regarding how she will start next season. She will have to set new objectives and work hard to achieve them in order not to fall into the trap of underestimation following this season’s success.
This example highlights Viens’ ability to score headers when being in complicated situations while avoiding tight marking and succeeding in putting the needed impact on the ball with an almost “no look header” that went inside the net. This also means that Viens can be very valuable during set-pieces, and the team can work a lot around her to create goalscoring situations using different plans.
Moreover, Viens proved on numerous occasions this season that she can deal well with complicated actions during big games and is a reliable striker when it comes to scoring goals against “big teams”.
This goal action against Bayern Munich not only highlights Viens’ strong character but also shows how she intelligently adapts to the situations she encounters and still succeeds in scoring even when she gets disturbed by opposing defenders or becomes obliged to use her “weaker foot”.
Being able to score many goals per season using her left foot should not be taken for granted, as few strikers are capable of achieving this high number of goals using both feet regularly and not just scoring a goal per year with the weaker foot.
Another quality that Viens masters is scoring from outside the box. She has scored numerous goals using her powerful shots from distance. This example highlights her ability to clear the way for herself and guarantee a shooting trajectory by dribbling past the opponents and then going for the shot.
Diversifying the ways with which she deals with similar situations makes goalkeepers and defenders confused as they never know what to expect from someone like Viens, knowing that she has the ability to opt for key passes towards the back of the defensive line, shoot from distance directly, penetrate towards the box before shooting and more. This is always an advantage for Viens as it makes her more unpredictable, especially when she uses her pace and moves quickly.
In addition to that, Viens also vary her shots from distance by surprising defences with shots using her left foot when possible and succeeds in confusing defenders and goalkeepers with such unpredicted decisions that prove to be correct.
This goal from a distance was scored when no one predicted Viens would go for a shot from that distance, especially considering that she had the ball on her left foot side and it was impossible for her to shoot with her right foot. Yet, she was still able to surprise everyone with a powerful and accurate lobbed shot that confused all players, including the goalkeeper.
It should also be said that Viens uses other goalscoring techniques, too. These include sliding shots, dribbling past goalkeepers before shooting, back-heel goals, lobs past goalkeepers, and more.
This mastery of different goalscoring techniques makes Viens a very clinical finisher. Thanks to her experience, goalscoring talent, and well-timed decision-making, she can deal with each situation in the best possible way.
Playmaking and assists
In addition to goalscoring, Viens proved on numerous occasions that she can be very useful in playmaking, especially when she plays alongside another striker or is used as a winger. With 65.8% in terms of passing accuracy and 51% regarding passes towards the final third, we can argue that Viens’s playmaking role at Roma and Canada should not be overlooked as the striker is capable of providing numerous key passes per match as well as crosses when she plays on the wing.
This assist to Giacinti highlights the idea of complementarity between the two players and shows that Viens is a team player who knows when to go for the individual solution and when to opt for passing.
Moreover, we can see Viens drop to midfield at times to receive the ball, and she proved that she can still be dangerous even when going to midfield. This goal action against Mexico highlights Viens’ vision and quick decision-making in terms of passing, as she was able to provide an assist from midfield with just one touch when the ball was bouncing in front of her, creating a one-on-one situation with the goalkeeper for her teammate thanks to a left-footed key pass.
Once again, the chemistry between Viens and Giacinti is obvious in the following example, as this was one of the reasons for Roma’s excellent attacking performances this season. Viens was able to resist the disturbance of Bayern Munich’s defenders on the right wing and succeeded in providing a backward pass to Giacinti, who finished the action inside the net.
Conclusion
Évelyne Viens had a very successful first season with the Giallorosse and is expected to be even more impactful at this team next season in Serie A Women and in the UWCL. She should build on her excellent performances to keep up her finishing rates and try to be the top Serie A goalscorer for the second consecutive time, as it will be very important for her to set targets and not lose concentration and motivation.
Moreover, Canada will be participating in the Women’s Olympics this summer, and Viens has the ability to put on convincing performances during this tournament to help her national team and maybe get some impressive offers that might lead her to leave Roma following this competition.
Comments