In this Serie A season, Luciano Spalletti’s Napoli are marching towards the Scudetto with a big margin over second in the league — they also entered the quarter-final of the UEFA Champions League after beating Eintracht Frankfurt. Under Spalletti, many players thrived, notable individuals included Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Victor Osimhen, and Min-jae Kim, but Stanislav Lobotka’s exceptional performance should not be underestimated either. The midfielder from Celta de Vigo finally managed to achieve his very best consistently game in, game out. This tactical analysis is a scout report which explains the strengths and weaknesses of the player and also explains why he is so important to the club.
Ball progression
In possession, Lobotka has been a key part to help Napoli move the ball smoothly. Spalletti suggests nowadays there are no more systems, it is all about spaces left by the opposition, and “you must be quick to spot them and know the right moment to strike”. Lobotka is exactly the player who makes the team function very well.
The first image is the heat map of Lobotka in the 2022/23 Serie A season, it is easy to notice his impact on the pitch — he was absolutely dominating the central spaces of the pitch, with high intensity in almost the whole central circle, as well as sometimes supporting the team on the side and receiving the ball in his own penalty area. This shows Lobotka’s dominance in the attack, he has a very high rate of participation.
Lobotka’s very good at helping the team to run the attack in all directions, especially receiving the ball from one side and moving it to the other.
The first scene shows how Napoli managed to attract Empoli to press on the side. Eight blue shirts committed only on five Napoli players. In that case, Lobotka would be quick to spot the free space on the other side of the pitch and put the full-back, Mário Rui, who came infield in play. Then Napoli had a chance to drive forward and reach the opposition’s third.
On a micro-level of analysis, Lobotka was quite special as he is able to do unusual things to surprise the opponents. For example, his recipient segment from the side might not be encouraged by some coaches, because he did not always receive with an open body angle, but Lobotka has the quality to turn danger into an opportunity.
In the second example, Napoli were attacking the left side with Lobotka in the middle, but instead of facing the opposition goal, he was rather orienting himself to the sideline, which hindered his full vision of the pitch.
And Lobotka did not correct the body orientation, instead, he dropped towards the ball in the same direction, facing the sideline, which turned out to be a bait to attract Tommaso Baldanzi to press. Lobotka’s body shape could be criticized as a “bad angle” because he was not facing the larger side of the pitch, while the ball was more likely to arrive at his weaker left foot while the opponent would be very well-prepared to jump on Piotr Zieliński if the pass happened. But Rui believed in his teammate and still played the ball to him.
As the analysis above illustrated, everything that happened before the pass suggested Napoli were at risk of losing the ball in the midfield, but Lobotka’s individual quality turned it around and opened a favourable condition for the team.
Instead of letting the ball fall to his left foot or receiving it with a closed turn on the right, Lobotka turned very quickly before the ball arrived. It was his little skill when it comes to ball receiving. Then, it was Empoli at risk of being overcommitted to press on the side, leaving the central spaces totally open as highlighted in dark.
Then, Napoli easily progressed the attack into an advanced area with Giovanni Di Lorenzo moving into the centre, Empoli were totally exposed in the inside and no one could close the Italian right-back.
Undroppable to Napoli
So far, the examples illustrated how Lobotka operates as a key pillar of Napoli’s attack, but how important is he? Spalletti’s selection would give a good answer. So far, Gli Azzurri started 92% of the Serie A matches, 24 out of 26, and he started in all eight UEFA Champions League games as well. The last time he started on the bench would be against Spezia Calcio in early September. These suggested Lobotka was almost undroppable to the team.
If Lobotka was not starting, the Tottenham loanee Tanguy Ndombélé would take his role to pair up with André Zambo Anguissa in the midfield. But note that Napoli only scored one goal each in those two games without Lobotka in the starting XI, and they scored 2.9 goals per game in the other 20 Serie A matches, the difference was huge.
This viz shows Ndombélé’s progressive passes in the games he started against Leece and Spezia, in which he had Lobotka’s starting spot, but he was also taken off at half-time in both matches as he could not function the team’s attack as we explained the importance of Lobokta above. The French midfielder only had five progressive passes in these two games and that’s why the team struggled a bit in possession.
By looking at the viz of Lobotka in the same period, in which he was playing against even stronger opponents — Lazio and Liverpool, the Slovakian midfielder offered significantly more progressive passes, especially in the central part of the pitch, there were also two progressive passes played into the penalty area. It was a stark contrast to what Ndombélé could provide, and that became the reason for Spalletti’s reluctance to rotate the player.
The next image showed a big difference between Ndombélé and Lobotka in the progression phases. Here, Di Lorenzo passed the ball to Ndombélé, despite there being no one pressing and plenty of spaces in the Leece shape, the Tottenham loanee failed to recognize that as a situation to turn and progress or try to break the line.
Instead, Ndombélé simply returned the ball to Di Lorenzo as a wall pass, and Napoli missed the moment to break the defence. It was particularly disappointing as the team also had another two players on the left side highlighted in yellow, ready to attack if Ndombélé could pack six players with one pass — imagine if it was Lobotka in the same scenario, he would have burst into the space as our examples have shown and taken advantage of the situation
Defensive role and weaknesses
Despite being very good on the ball, Lobotka is not without his weaknesses as he can get caught out in defensive situations, this section will give an explanation of his role, performance, and weak spot that could adversely affect the Napoli defence.
This viz shows Lobotka’s defensive actions. He had a pretty large covering area and almost all of the centre of the pitch covered. He also made at least half of his interceptions and defensive actions in the opposition’s half, while his interceptions could be significantly fewer behind his own central circle. This shows the tendency of the player to jump in the defence and tried to attack the opponent aggressively in the press.
This scatter plot shows the defensive duels performance of Serie A midfielders this season, Lobotka recorded 6.84 defensive duels — not among those with the most although the number was above the mean. However, his success rate of 70.62% was very high, only Jerdy Schouten of Bologna had a higher percentage. This shows Lobotka was strong at dispossessing the opponent and could help the team to recover possession effectively.
However, as our second scatter plot shows, Lobotka could be a liability in defending the aerial balls as he is one of the worst when it comes to aerial metrics. He only attempted an aerial duel in each game and the win rate was so low at 26.92%, but this was understandable given he has a big physical disadvantage as he is only 170cm tall. Meanwhile, this would not be a big issue to Napoli as he had Anguissa’s help in those situations, the former Fulham midfielder had a 64.06% win rate in aerial duels — the second-high in Serie A, which could help Lobotka a lot.
We also had several game situations to illustrate how Lobotka behaved without the ball. This example against Milan shows he was willing to jump from his position to support a high press, taking up the space behind his striker to lock the opposition 6, as one of the main defensive principles of Napoli was to block the centre, so the opponents could not play through or into them easily.
But Lobotka’s aggressive positioning in the press could also be a two-sided coin, as the team could also lose compactness vertically which concedes spaces between the lines. In this example against Fiorentina, Napoli set up in a similar way although the shape was different, they tried to block the centre with Lobotka having a very frontal mindset — to defend and control the space in front, not at his back. Then, in the red zone, Fiorentina could be an advantage with multiple players in front of the defence. Nevertheless, Napoli mostly keep themselves safe as Kim was a very skilful defender who compensated for these situations well with his defensive actions.
Lobotka’s weak spot would be his awareness to defend spaces in front of his defenders, sometimes he was too forward-thinking without possession, and sometimes he just forgot to track and was caught ball-watching. This example versus Eintracht Frankfurt in the second leg shows the Napoli defence dropped deep to defend, but Lobotka did not protect the space around the penalty area, leaving Daichi Kamada completely free to arrive into the space and attempted a shot.
This weakness of Lobotka could also be easily observed in the away game against AC Milan, Napoli conceded the equalizer because of similar issues. The defensive position of Lobotka was too high and the Gli Azzurri was flat, so the central defender had to step out to confront the player in space, then, the last line was disorganized while Lobotka was too easily eliminated from the attack because of his positioning, Milan took advantage of the moment of Napoli being disorganized and scored.
Conclusion
This analysis suggests Lobotka has a very crucial role in Napoli’s offensive tactics, as he was so good and dynamic to provoke conditions, as well as exploiting the space at the right moment, despite being so tiny in size. Recently he signed a new deal with Napoli to keep him at the club until 2027 and let’s see if the Slovakian midfielder could help Napoli to win more trophies in the future.
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