After a long journey at Montpellier Hérault Sport Club, where Sakina Karchaoui stood out as one of the best left-backs in the D1 féminine, she soon became an impactful player for Olympique Lyonnais for one season and then went to Paris Saint-Germain where she had some great successes from 2021 until today.
It was recently announced in French media that Karchaoui has just renewed her contract with PSG for four years until 2028, refusing to change her team despite receiving some interesting offers and preferring to pursue her experience with PSG since she believes that she can contribute heavily to her team’s upcoming achievements and help them annually in their battle with Olympique Lyonnais for the league title. More importantly, Karchaoui’s ultimate target with PSG is to reach the UEFA Women’s Champions League final with them and eventually lift the title, knowing that she has already won the 2019-2020 edition with Olympique Lyonnais.
It is important to note that Karchaoui started her career as a midfielder before switching to play as a left-back and becoming one of the best in her position. Surely, Montpellier and Olympique Lyonnais played a huge role in shaping Karchaoui’s footballing identity and helping her progress in a more remarkable way before she joins PSG to showcase her skills even more and become a more complete player.
What made Karchaoui even more prolific as a left-back is her ability to score decisive goals on crucial occasions, such as in UEFA Women’s Champions League group stage games against tough teams like Real Madrid for example, in addition to her key passes and numerous assists that made her even more valuable for PSG and later for the French national team as well.
In fact, Karchaoui earned her first cap with the France national team in April 2016 against Ukraine before getting the chance to participate in big tournaments such as Euro 2017, FIFA World Cup 2019, Euro 2022 and the FIFA World Cup 2023, knowing that she played a crucial role in most games and was always valuable for Les Bleus.
In order to explore Karchaoui’s abilities in a more extensive way, this analysis will cover the French international’s defensive and attacking traits while identifying her roles within PSG’s tactics in a tactical analysis article written in the form of a scout report.
Roles and positions at PSG
Karchaoui started her career as a midfielder initially and therefore learned how to provide key passes and have the necessary vision and quick reactions to distribute the ball accurately while being surrounded with opponents. Being raised as a midfielder also helped Karchaoui develop better ball protection abilities and be physically solid. All these midfielders’ characteristics later helped Karchaoui in becoming a world-class left-back as she used the mentioned abilities in the left-back role while working harder to master the main left-back roles such as marking wingers, mastering all types of crosses from the left-wing, cutting inside, dribbling past opponents and running near the line and more.
At PSG, Karchaoui’s roles are various and include set-piece taking (mainly penalties), crossing from the wing, participating actively in the build-up, providing passing solutions and doing overlaps on the left-wing, defending and marking direct opponents and applying high pressing whenever needed. Although Karchaoui has usually played on the left flank mainly, we see her sometimes leaning towards the right wing on some occasions, and she proved that she can deal well with the various situations she encounters on that wing.
But overall, Karchaoui remains a defensively solid left-back with excellent attacking attributes that allow her to advance so often and always be useful inside the final third, as PSG and France usually instruct her to advance in order to benefit from her attacking abilities.
The following heatmap shows that Karchaoui tends to advance a lot and participates actively in her team’s attacks, knowing that both of her head coaches at PSG and with France instruct her to advance a lot per game. Exploiting Karchaoui a bit further as a left-winger at times can free her from defensive duties and help using her attacking traits even more when needed.
Goalscoring and shooting abilities
In terms of shooting, Karchaoui equals 31.8% shots on target on average, knowing that she shoots 0.65 times per game. This average is normal mainly because Karchaoui’s main duties does not include shooting, given her position on the pitch.
Nevertheless, Karchaoui has been successful in proving on numerous occasions that she can be an excellent goalscorer, especially when using shots from distance. Sometimes, she even attempted scoring goals from the left wing and was successful in doing so, as you can see in this example against Rodez when Karchaoui was capable of scoring a beautiful goal from the wing, using a great shooting technique after she pretended that she was going to cross the ball towards the box. The fact that the goalkeeper was a few meters out of her goal encouraged Karchaoui to go for the shooting attempt, and luckily for her, the ball went directly inside the net.
In addition, sometimes, we can see Karchaoui moving to the right wing and cutting inside from there before shooting. Although she is not very used to playing on that side, Karchaoui proved on numerous occasions that she could score even from that wing, using her powerful shots and critical positioning inside the final third mainly.
This goal against Fleury highlights Karchaoui’s shooting abilities from that right wing. That being said, PSG can benefit even more from Karchaoui’s shooting abilities by instructing her to join midfield more often and get second-balls when needed in order to have more suitable shooting opportunities and use her powerful shots in a way that increases her number of goals per season and shots on target per match.
More importantly, Karchaoui is capable of being central in PSG’s attacks and has already shown her importance in this regard on many occasions. She can use her pace to penetrate inside opposing defences while doing one-two combinations with her attacking teammates to make the action quicker and more surprising to defences while escaping from marking to find herself near the goal. Her pace helps her a lot during such actions, knowing that she is among the most rapid full-backs in the league at the moment.
This action against Bordeaux not only highlights Karchaoui’s penetration skills but also her vision, passing accuracy, and quick reactions to what surrounds her. She initiated the action with a pass to a teammate before running towards the box and getting the ball back there to finish the action with success. It is also worth noting that the way Karchaoui deals with confrontations with goalkeepers is remarkable, as she usually avoids losing her temper and remains calm.
Assists and passing
Passing is what Karchaoui does best, and that’s why she is one of the best in terms of assists and key passes, especially from the left wing. She can provide numerous types of crosses and key passes per game, which equals 81.8% in terms of passing accuracy and 71.1% regarding passes to the final third. She was already good enough in terms passing at Montpellier and Olympique Lyonnais, but at PSG, she found the chemistry needed with the attacking players to create more goalscoring chances per match and be pivotal in her team’s decisive goals.
This example shows one of Karchaoui’s numerous short-pass assists, which highlights the player’s accuracy from the left wing even though she was providing this pass while running and after dribbling past her direct opponent. We saw Karchaoui often making these backward passes while on the line, and most of these passes created a lot of danger for opposing defences.
In addition to that type of assist, Karchaoui can also be creative when she penetrates in midfield, especially during counter-attacks, when she gets the chance to serve strikers while defences are not yet organised.
In this action with France against Norway, she got the ball on the left flank and penetrated towards the middle before noticing Kadidiatou Diani’s run at the back of the defensive line and provided her with a through pass to meet her after the defensive bloc’s line and allow her to have a one-on-one situation with the goalkeeper.
As mentioned above, Karchaoui can cross very well and has always been the primary source of her team’s header goals. This very recent example in the UEFA Women’s Champions League game against Häcken highlights her ability to cross with accuracy, whether from long or short distances, allowing the receiver to direct her header easily towards the net. This being said, Karchaoui masters early crosses, too and has already made assists using them, which makes a polyvalent assist-maker for both PSG and France.
Defending and sliding tackles
Defensive-wise, Karchaoui can be considered as a very solid left-back with strong physical abilities and capacity of winning defensive duels with an average equalling 65.8%. She also wins 56.3% duels in the air and always applies her defensive duties with discipline and great intelligence. This intelligence can be seen mainly in her interception attempts, especially when it comes to intercepting passes. Karchaoui makes 4.75 interceptions per game and in addition to that, she usually applies effective high pressing and helps her team in that pressing phase with a lot of aggressivity in the opponent’s half.
This example against Roma highlights Karchaoui’s aggressive attitude when the team applies high pressing and show how effective she can be in this regard. She uses sliding tackles in a very useful way and often avoid making fouls using tackles. As you can see in this action, she was able to intercept the ball from the opponent with a well-timed sliding tackle that prevented Roma from continuing the build-up from the back successfully.
Conclusion
Overall, Karchaoui is considered one of the best full-backs in France and among the most excellent left-backs in Europe. Renewing the contract of such a prolific player until 2028 represents a very good achievement for PSG, who will continue to strive to win the UWCL title and reinforce their team to get the advantage over Olympique Lyonnais in the league during the upcoming seasons.
At the same time, Karchaoui will benefit from stability and think only about progressing and performing better with PSG and France in order to help both teams win in their upcoming challenges. Why not win some individual prizes in the near future?
Comments