Serie A currently has some serious high-value talent playing in it – Kvicha Kvaratskhelia, Nicoló Barella, Rafael Leão, and Victor Osimhen are all players worth over £65m currently, according to Transfermarkt (TM).
But the most valuable player in Italy’s top tier is Inter Milan’s talismanic striker, Lautaro Martínez – the 2023/24 Serie A Golden Boot winner.
With an impressive 30 G/A in 33 appearances in Serie A, Martínez is undoubtedly one of the best players Serie A has to offer right now.
According to TM, the Argentinian forward is currently valued at £92.6m.
Martínez is currently in his prime at 26 years of age, and while many clubs would love to have him in their team, most of those clubs could only dream of such a happening.
However, clubs will undoubtedly be on the hunt for the next Serie A goal machine, the next Lautaro Martínez.
In this data analysis, we will use TFA’s comparison tool xGold to identify some potential future stars in Italy who show similarities to Inter’s star man.
Criteria
As we want to find stars of the future in this analysis, we will limit our search to CFs aged 23 and under who played for Serie A, B, or C clubs in the 23/24 season – players who were on loan from a club outside of those three leagues will not be featured.
As Martínez has been known to play as an attacking midfielder/second striker occasionally, we will allow the search to highlight players who play as a winger/attacking midfielder as well as a striker, with the aim of finding players with positional versatility.
There is no limit in terms of market value.
The search will produce a list of 80 players who meet the criteria – ultimately, the top 80 U23 strikers in Italy who are similar to Lautaro Martínez in terms of play style.
The table below shows the 80 players, highlighting their similarity rating and overall quality rating according to xGold’s algorithm.
It is worth noting that the search highlights players that were at Italian clubs at the start of the 23/24 season – for example, Rasmus Højlund appears in the search despite moving to Manchester United in August of 2023.
Of course, the top players we recommend and analyse further will be current Serie A/B/C players.
Those who follow Italian will be familiar with a good number of the names on the graph above – the search produced a high number of players in the second and third tier of Italian football, giving us a good variety of players & levels to choose from.
We have selected seven players for analysis, but there are other players within the above data who could, of course, go on to be successful centre-forwards in elite football.
Players with a high rating and similarity register, such as Napoli’s Antonio Cioffi and Sassuolo’s Jacopo Pellegrini, have shown some promise—they’ll hope the goals start to follow sooner rather than later.
Stiven Shpendi – Cesena (87% similarity, 80 TFA rating)
21-year-old Albanian U21 international Stiven Shpendi got his first taste of Serie A football last season while on loan at Empoli.
In truth, his game time was limited and scattered across 12 league games – it was the 22/23 season where he was able to show more of what he is capable of, where he contributed 15 G/A in 29 Serie C appearances for his parent club Cesena.
The season prior, he managed an astonishing 30 G/A in 23 in Primavera 2.
It could be argued that the sudden jump up to Italy’s top league came too quickly, but let’s take a closer look at his 22/23 season percentiles.
As you can see, he offered a similar profile to Lautaro Martínez when considering the above percentiles – except for big differences in aerial success and positioning metrics (i.e.
interceptions).
In terms of chance creation and build-up play statistics (progressive passes, dangerous passes), he posts similar percentiles to Martínez – the same can be said for his goal contributions per 90, shots, dribbles, and touches in the box per 90.
While it is important to remember the difference in competition quality the players were playing in (a point that should be remembered throughout this data analysis.)
Shpendi clearly offered some similarities to Martínez.
Lorenzo Di Stefano – Modena (91% similarity, 65 TFA rating)
A surname that carries a lot of weight in the football world.
But this Di Stefano in particular – Lorenzo Di Stefano was the top player in our search in terms of similarity.
Key similarities, as far as the data goes, involves progressive passes and dribbles.
Di Stefano struggled in front of goal last season, bagging three G/A in 884 minutes – this runs as a relatively close percentile to Lautaro Martínez, but again, league differences must be accounted for.
He currently plays for Serie B side Modena after joining in the mid-season transfer window – he played for fellow Serie B side Lecco in the first half of the season.
Prior to that, he was a youngster at Sampdoria – the 21/22 season was a positive one for Di Stefano: he scored eight league goals in 1346 minutes while on loan at Serie C club Gubbio.
He also recorded some impressive goalscoring numbers at Primavera level for Sampdoria.
Sebastiano Esposito – Inter Milan (87% similarity, 63 TFA rating)
Not only do Inter Milan have thee Lautaro Martínez on their books, but according to xGold, they have ready-made replacement at the club as well!
Sebastiano Esposito came in with a similarity rating of 87% – the (joint) second-highest in the whole search.
While the 22-year-old is still yet to reach the goalscoring numbers of Martínez, he has shown promise and statistical similarities, posting similar percentiles in dangerous passes, dribbles, positioning, and shots per 90 (in the 22/23 season)
The Italy U21 international spent last season on loan at Serie B club Sampdoria, managing six goals in 1672 minutes.
He had several loan spells prior to that one, too, ranging from Serie B clubs like SPAL and Venezia to Belgian club Anderlecht to Swiss club Basel.
This upcoming season could be a big one for Esposito – he is set to gain some vital Serie A experience in a loan spell at Empoli.
While he is highly unlikely to knock Lautaro Martínez off of his throne at Inter, Esposito has the chance to force his way up the pecking order at the club or make himself a sellable asset to gain a move to another top-flight team.
Lorenzo Colombo – AC Milan (84% similarity, 44 TFA rating)
Inter’s fierce rivals AC Milan also apparently have a budding young striker in the mould of Lautaro Martínez, who goes by the name Lorenzo Colombo.
The 22-year-old has spent the past two campaigns on loan at Serie A clubs Monza (23/24) and Lecce (22/23) but struggled to light the place up when it comes to goalscoring, managing just five G/A in1462 minutes at Monza and six G/A in 1643 minutes at Lecce.
Nonetheless, xGold tells us he has a similarity rating of 84%, so his play style has displayed Martínez-esque traits.
As you can see, he didn’t rank high in the percentiles chart for shots per 90 last season, which likely played a part in his struggle in front of goal.
Like Martínez, he shows good positioning traits off-the-ball while enjoying a dribble in possession.
It is possible that Milan will see Colombo as a possible contributor this season – from the bench or as a rotation option at the most; otherwise, another loan move could be on the cards.
Either way, he will be desperate to improve his goal ratio.
Zito Luvumbo – Cagliari (81% similarity, 69 TFA rating)
With a TFA rating of 69, Angolan forward Zito Luvumbo is one of the highest-rated in the entire search, and while his 81% similarity rating is one of the lowest of the final players we selected, he shows some similarities to Lautaro Martínez.
Namely, his defensive actions but also his tendency for a progressive pass.
Luvumbo’s career started in Angola’s top division for 1⁰ de Agosto before alerting Cagliari scouts, leading to the club signing him in 2020, aged 18.
After impressing for the youth teams at the club, he earned a prominent spot in their promotion-winning side in 22/23, contributing six G/A in 2149 minutes while playing a variety of positions.
This past season, he has been a significant presence for Cagliari in Serie A, bagging 10 G/A in 2130 minutes.
Luvumbo has displayed a constant improvement during his time in Italy, and we could see him play a big part in Cagliari’s 24/25 campaign with more goals to his name.
Cristian Shpendi – Cesena (77% similarity, 69 TFA rating)
For the second time in this analysis, we’re talking about a forward called Shpendi – Cristian is the aforementioned Stiven’s younger brother, currently playing for Cesena.
Shpendi was vital in his club’s promotion-winning season last season, scoring 21 goals and adding six assists in 33 Serie C appearances.
His prolific nature is just one way he is similar to Lautaro Martínez – other ways include his box presence, chance creation, and defensive contribution.
His aerial ability and positioning traits are the only two major differences between the two.
Stepping up to Serie B will be a big test for the 21-year-old, but it could provide the stepping stone to life as a Serie A footballer if he manages to adapt quickly and bring his 23/24 form into the 24/25 campaign.
Conclusion
Lautaro Martínez has been one of Serie A’s most prolific goalscorers for a few years now—and he’s currently their most valuable player.
If that isn’t a role model for up-and-coming strikers in Italian football, then what is?
We’ve highlighted six of the best from out initial search of 80 players from Serie A, B, and C, but, as we touched on earlier, there were other players we could have selected for further analysis.
We mentioned Cioffi and Pellegrini, but the likes of Eddie Salcedo and 19-year-old Jonathan Pitou, for example.
Nicoló Cambiaghi ranked with a high similarity rating.
Still, due to a lower TFA rating and his primary position being on the left wing, we opted not to include him for further analysis.
The six we did select were selected mainly because of their similarity/TFA ratings—their G/A contributions were also a factor.
We believe they all have the potential to be key players in the 24/25 season, particularly Cristian Shpendi and Zito Luvumbo.
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