In the summer of 2021, Celtic was quite busy strengthening the team to be able to compete for first place with their bitter rival, after Glasgow Rangers dominated last season and won the league by 20 points. To strengthen the attack, they signed Kyogo Furuhashi, Georgios Giakoumakis, Jota and Liel Abada. The main character of this analysis will be Liel Abada who was bought from Maccabi Petah-Tikva for €4 million to occupy the right-winger position. This scout report will contain a tactical analysis of Abada’s attributes and playing style.
Abada instantly got a chance to play in the starting XI in UEFA Champions League qualifiers against the Danish side Midtjylland, and he made an instant impact by scoring a goal on his home debut. However, his team still didn’t go through which led them to the Europa League group stage after two qualifying rounds. Celtic placed third in the group with Bundesliga side Bayer Leverkusen and La Liga side Real Betis finishing ahead of them. The highlight for Abada was a brace of assists against Real Betis.
Player overview
Liel Abada is a 20-year-old and Transfermarkt values him at €4.5 million. Abada is listed at 168 cm and he is predominantly right-footed, but he is comfortable using his left foot regularly. In the Celtic system, he is mostly used as a right-winger in 4-2-3-1 formation. Abada is having a magnificent start to the season, having already made a lot of goal contributions in all competitions — not only the domestic league.
This data profile compares Abada with the U23 wingers who play in the top-five European leagues with at least 600 minutes this season. As we can see, Abada is dominant in most metrics which is slightly connected with the lower quality league he plays in, but that shouldn’t underestimate his value on the pitch for his team. He is averaging 2.34 shots per 90 which means he is a volume shooter, but his high xG per 90 shows that he takes shots from good positions, mostly from inside the penalty area because he has many touches in the box and doesn’t hesitate to shoot when he is close to the opposition goal. Not only that, he is a threat to the goal but can also create opportunities for his teammates constantly based on his xA per 90 and shot assists per 90. Abada attempts a below-average number of dribbles compared to the U23 wingers, but he is quite effective because he picks the right situations to go into 1v1s. His crossing numbers are encouraging because he attempts a high amount of crosses with a solid 28% cross accuracy. His passing accuracy could be better but given his creative tendencies, it is normal that the pass accuracy is between 70-80%.
After a quick overview of his profile and looking at his qualities from a data perspective, in the next sections we will make a detailed analysis of his playing style and his strengths.
Goalscoring ability and shot creation
In this section, we’ll see how Abada creates goalscoring opportunities for himself through his off the ball movement & dribbling ability.
The first image shows us how Abada can time his runs behind the defence to get into a goalscoring position. He is extremely fast and can attack the central areas by making runs from wide positions as that way, he draws the full-back wide and opens a passing lane for a teammate to make a killer pass. It is hard to mark him because of his well-timed runs at such high speed.
The next example shows us the situations which suit Abada the most when he is on the ball.
We can see that Abada makes a direct run towards the full-back with a lot of space on his right side. He received the ball into his feet by coming from a wide area and this kind of situation suits him the most because he has enough space to push the ball past the defender on his right foot and get inside the penalty area to attempt a shot.
The reason why it’s best when he has space to go on his right foot will be explained in the next example.
When he cuts inside onto his left foot, he is always focused on a goal and looks to attempt a shot. The problem with that is that most of his shots end up getting blocked because he doesn’t get rid of the opponents and goes into the crowd where there is less space for shots to pass through. Not only that, but it seems that defenders are aware of this tendency and engage fully in blocking him because he’ll rarely decide on doing something different from an area like where we see him on the image.
It often happens that he draws a lot of attention from the defence when he has the ball and if he could recognise situations like this to make a pass towards the teammate who made a run behind his back, it would make him more unpredictable for defenders. His decision making in these situations needs improving.
Abada moves intelligently inside the penalty area and he knows how to get into good spots to score goals. In this situation, we can see him anticipating the cross and attacking the space between the centre-back and full-back. What is quite impressive is his heading ability and timing of his jumps given his small frame.
Abada managed to score four headers this season despite probably being the smallest player on the pitch in most matches, which just adds value to his offensive skill set. As we can see, he meets the end of the cross in the area where the centre-back can’t reach the ball and the full-back doesn’t have enough time to react to clear the danger which leads to Abada heading the ball into the goal. It is worth mentioning that he quite often meets the low crosses on the far post and his pace allows him to catch the opponents off-guard by getting in front of them to shoot the ball in these situations.
After going through this section we saw how dangerous and effective Abada can be in the final third. The next section will show us his creativity and how he creates opportunities for his teammates.
Creation
He’s assisted eight times this season for his teammates, but it seems that it could even have been a double-digit amount if his teammates scored a few clear cut chances he created for them. The first example in this section is about his quality dribbling ability and how he exposes the body position of the opponent to beat him with his pace.
In this situation, he hugs the touchline and makes the first touch with his right foot to stop the ball, but given the angle from which the full-back runs towards him, he makes a quick second touch into the space down the flank and easily beats the opponent with his agility and acceleration.
Abada has good first touch and receiving skills which help him often to turn the opponent quickly and drive with the ball towards the goal. It’s in this way that he creates crossing situations for himself on the flank or shooting opportunities when receiving in central areas.
His pace allows him to drive to the byline and create cutback opportunities for himself. Abada has a variety of crosses and often will chip the ball towards the far post when reaching the touchline, but he is also capable of finding his teammates with cutback passes.
The next example shows his quality crossing ability by finding the teammate over multiple opponents.
It seems that he has better cross accuracy when executing the cross from a static position rather than while running at speed. In this situation, Abada makes an assist for his teammate on the edge of the six-yard box after delivering a pinpoint cross onto his head.
Allowing him too much space to cross is not the smartest decision by the opponent because he regularly creates chances with his crossing. The next image shows that his creation is not limited only to crosses.
Leading the transition, Abada runs towards the opposition final third and he recognises the run of his teammate between the two defenders into the space behind. Abada makes a pass at the right moment to avoid the offside position and puts his teammate into a 1v1 situation with the goalkeeper.
He has good vision and weights his passes well, but just like with shooting situations in the previous section, he needs to make better passing decisions which will lead to better chances and also to fewer errors with his passes.
In this example, Abada made his decision without being fully aware of his surroundings and teammates’ positions. It seems that he decided to make a cutback pass while running with the ball into the penalty area, but he had an opportunity to square the ball(right arrow) towards the teammate who would have an easy job putting the ball into the open net. However, by making a cutback pass, the closest defender is still able to get a block in and at least narrow the angle of a shot, while playing the parallel pass makes him unable to prevent the shot.
These are the details that make the difference at the top level, and even with his cutback pass being successful, his teammate missed the chance which would probably not happen if he made the right decision.
Contribution in transitions
The last section will show us how Abada can contribute in transition in both directions. Of course, his electric pace makes him very dangerous on wide areas and in counter-attacks; he can be a threat as a ball carrier or by running into the open space.
We can see him driving towards the opposition half and while running with the ball, he weights the opponent a little to put him on the wrong foot and penetrate through the middle without pressure. After getting to the edge of the final third, he releases the pass onto his right while continuing his run forward to be in a situation to score a goal.
We can see how he ends his run just outside the penalty area which is a good position from where he can receive the cutback pass and has enough time to attempt a shot. This example shows that Abada can make an impact in counterattacks with his quickness and directness.
The last frame of this analysis shows us a situation where he loses the ball after being challenged by two opponents. He instantly counter-presses the ball carrier who makes a quick back pass towards the defender, but Abada doesn’t give up and continues his run to press the defender as well who doesn’t have any option but to clear the ball forward.
Even though Abada has weak body strength and doesn’t win many defensive duels, he can play with high intensity and put instant pressure on the opponents preventing them from having too much time on the ball. It is still a work in progress for him, but he surely can fit in high pressing systems.
Conclusion
This analysis gave us information on Abada’s abilities and how he contributes to his team. It is clear that he made an instant impact for Celtic in his debut season with already 10 goals and 8 assists in 32 appearances in all competitions. Given his age and the history of Celtic developing players, we can predict that in a few seasons, we will watch him in the top five European leagues if he keeps performing like this consistently.
Comments