As the 2022 Allsvenskan campaign ended, teams around the world snapped up talents from Sweden. Brighton got Yasin Ayari from AIK and Ulsan Hyundai got both Gustav Ludwigson and Darijan Bojanić, and Williot Swedberg joined Celta de Vigo last summer. Meanwhile, as Burnley’s EFL Championship title challenge continued, Vincent Kompany looked to strengthen his squad, and he hand-picked Hjalmar Ekdal from Djurgården, who was also the current Swedish national team member, Albin Ekdal’s younger brother.
As a player, Kompany was a legendary centre-back at Man City and Belgium — this tactical analysis aims to illustrate why Ekdal stood out to the Belgian manager as a must-have in his own position and has the quality to help the club complete their mission and secure promotion back to the Premier League.
Comfortability on the ball
Firstly, as we all knew, Burnley moved away from the conventional 4-4-2, long and direct style which was implemented by Sean Dyche for a long time. Now, they look for defenders with completely different qualities, and the players should be more capable on the ball. In that regard, Ekdal was a good candidate.
This scatter plot shows Ekdal’s ball progression compared to other central defenders in the Allsvenskan. Although he only had 1.88 progressive passes per 90, which was not outstanding given the likes of Lars Sætra and Lasse Nielsen were doing better, he was really good in progressive runs per 90, ranking third in this metric. Only Jetmir Haliti and Even Hovland had better numbers.
When we take some in-game examples in the analysis, it was easily shown that Ekdal was not only good on the ball technically, but he also had good awareness to support his teammates in possession. At Sirius, Henrik Rydström was his coach so the passing game would not be something new to him, that could be a reason that he was fitting at Burnley easily.
The first image suggests Ekdal passed to a teammate in the centre, which was an easy, short-distance pass, but what mattered was his action after the pass — creating depth by dropping back. This sounds simple but not all centre-backs have the sense of mind to enact this when required.
As Ekdal dropped back to almost the halfway line, he distanced himself from the opposite wide players compared to his initial passing position. That was important so that he could generate a better angle with more time to pass when he received a return ball from his teammate.
Then, in this action, we show Ekdal’s ball-playing level. He was so competent at using his body as a tool, in this case, he intended to pass outside as the body shape suggested, and the Norwich defender was disguised to go wide. In fact, he intended to pass vertically to Josh Cullen, who might not have had the best body orientation, but since Ekdal’s disguised movement has dislocated the opposition, now Cullen could turn more easily for the next action.
Despite being young and not a really famous player outside Sweden, Ekdal has already gained experience in playing at the continental level. His good performances helped Djurgården qualify for the knockout stage of the UEFA European Conference League. Apart from passing well, he was also brave in the build-up, willing to take advantage of space with runs forward or ball-carrying.
The good action from Ekdal set up the first goal of Djurgården in their home win versus Gent in the group stage. As the opposition pressed hard, Ekdal spotted the space behind the opposition midfield line and moved into it, allowing himself to be an option on the opponent’s blindside, then found by his teammate. Usually, you would not expect an “old-school” centre-back to take such an aggressive position, but it suggests the player’s strong adaptability.
As he took advantage of that space which was rather unexpected by the opponents, Ekdal charged forward and allowed Djurgården a breakthrough with a very favourable advantage. Gent’s last line was so disorganized because of how the home side broke the press unexpectedly, and then Kim Bergstrand/Thomas Lagerlöf’s side took advantage of this situation to create a goal.
Smart defending is crucial
Apart from helping the team in ball progression, as a defender and unlike his former partner Isak Hien, Ekdal might not be a very physical player, but he was able to defend intelligently with good defensive skills.
However, in this scatter plot summarising the key defensive actions of Allsvenskan defenders, Ekdal didn’t rank significantly well. In terms of defensive duels per 90, he did not record a high figure and 5.22 was only slightly above average. However, he was decent in intercepting the ball with 7.5 PAdj interceptions, not many defenders in Allsvenskan were better than Ekdal in this number.
As a defender, Ekdal was capable of defending smartly but also defending quickly. It was all about his good adaptability to the situation. In this example versus Norwich, he pushed with Teemu Pukki running diagonally in front of him; average defenders would have been easily attracted and oriented their bodies towards that direction. However, Ekdal remained calm enough to monitor the situation, so he was not distracted by the striker’s run.
Ekdal’s calmness proved to be very important if we looked at what happened next. The Norwich player on the ball actually did not have an angle to find Pukki centrally when two Burnley players approached him, and it would be a bit needless to track the Finland striker at the expense of exposing his gap with the right-back. Since Ekdal did not guess the situation, he managed to balance himself and intercept the pass when the opponents tried to slice a vertical ball behind the defence, it was some very clever defending.
This viz shows Ekdal’s defensive coverage as a Burnley defender. As the team had a lot of possession and always pushed high to attack the opposition box, he is required to defend with bigger space behind. But Ekdal managed to handle that well, and the viz showed he made many interceptions and defensive actions for the team, but only one foul so far in the competition. It was important to prevent free-kicks in the Championship as teams in that league would always use that as an opportunity to create shoot opportunities.
However, aerially, Ekdal is not yet a very strong player who can win most of the duels. This scatter plot shows the aerial performances of the defenders in Allsvenskan 2022, Ekdal was not too good, although he had 4.61 aerial duels per 90, which means he could frequently engage the opponents. However, when it comes to the success rate, the likes of Lars Sætra, Dennis Hadzikadunić, and Alexander Miolsević are better, as Ekdal’s success rate of 48.67% was lower than the mean at 58%.
Handling transitions
Because of Ekdal’s good defensive judgments, techniques, and mentality, he could also help Burnley control the transition as well, stopping counter-attacks from the opponents. It would be very important to the team as Kompany’s Burnley looked to control the game, and win back the ball quickly with good tactics.
Here, when Norwich were going through a counterattack in the midfield, Burnley were so exposed with only two central defenders remaining. Ekdal was usually calm in these situations, he never engaged recklessly, and therefore he opted to delay the attack by dropping back.
As Ekdal retreated, the situation got more complex as Norwich would be outnumbered by the deep runner from the centre. If Ekdal was too committed on Onel Hernández, he would enlarge the gap to his centre-back partner, and now, he was yet to close the angle of Hernández, the pass would slip into that channel and very likely Burnley would concede a 1v1 situation.
But Ekdal handled it well, he kept his distance with the ball carrier and never tried to engage, so he lured Hernández forward, controlling the direction.
But then, as Hernádez could not shuffle the angle diagonally, Ekdal finally waited for a better moment to engage as now the ball carrier’s options were significantly limited. Although the central runner was still present, Hernández had no angle to play into that channel behind Ekdal, so he took the touch outside with his right foot.
That touch from Hernández was easily recognized by Ekdal, as he could anticipate the pass would come from the left foot in this case. So Ekdal could get closer to block the ball angle and intercept the ball before it reached the central area.
Another example is from the game against Preston North End. Ekdal showed he was so competent in the rest-defence to help Burnley control the counter-attacks. In this scene, as the opposition passed the ball forward, Ekdal’s challenge angle was very clever as the attacker was right-footed so the Swedish central defender approached from the centre, ensuring the attacker could not take an easy touch to the inside. As he forced the opposition touch to outside, the receiver would have narrower spaces to dribble as he was bounded by the touchline, and this limited the possibility of the counterattack at that moment.
Conclusion
As we have shown in the scout report, Ekdal was a really interesting player, definitely one of the best from Sweden who has a bright future. Under Kompany’s coaching, he should take an even bigger step to improve as a player when he gets more used to the style of English football. This season, the analysis suggests Ekdal’s arrival would be a strong reinforcement for Burnley as the Clarets look to emphatically win the EFL Championship.
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