The Argentine has taken over Frosinone.
There have been several surprises in the 2023/2024 Serie A. There Fiorentina he has been improving his results and his game progressively since Italiano sat on the Viola bench, which is why some might say that it is not a surprise. At the same time, however, no one expected them to finish fourth, just one point behind Milan at the halfway point. Impossible not to mention the Bolognawhich thanks to Thiago Motta and to the shining talent of Circus they are giving anyone a hard time, proving to be a particularly difficult team to face both at home and away. Genoa also surprised, led by Icelandic Gudmundsson. Grifone’s strength lies in the Ferraris stronghold, a prohibitive field on which to play, where only Milan and Fiorentina have collected three points. Then there is a team, which many thought was doomed at the beginning of the year, which thanks to a coach often criticized in the past and his rising star is making everyone think again: it is Di Francesco’s Frosinone and Matias Soulé.
Soulé’s arrival in Frosinone, as often happens, is a substantial coincidence: the Argentine was one of the possible counterparts that Juventus had proposed to Sassuolo for the purchase of Berardi, only to obtain a series of rejections. In this situation Frosinone enters the scene, having already obtained the loan of Barrenechea from Juve about a month earlier and, shortly after, will also obtain that of Kaio Jorge. In Ciociaria, therefore, Soulé arrives as perhaps the most interesting shot on the market, also with the awareness of already being one of the highest quality players in Di Francesco’s squad.
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Soulé, both in the Argentine national teams and in Juventus’ Next Gen, plays mainly as a right winger but upon his arrival in the first team, in a manner not dissimilar to what happened with Chiesa and other wingers, he immediately found himself forced into roles that were not strictly his, ending up as the shoulder of Vlahovic or Milik or even the full-back in Allegri’s 3-5-2.
In this sense, for a player with his style and his qualities to end up in the hands of a tutelary deity of the 4-3-3 like Eusebio Di Francesco it is perhaps the best thing that could have happened to him; in fact, in Frosinone Soulé was immediately brought back to his reference role and in very few matches he also became one a center of gravity of the possession phase, thanks to an elegant and soft left-footedness and his tendency to move around the pitch to always shine. From his feet, therefore, beautiful and effective filters continually come out for the cuts of his teammates. As can also be seen from his heatmap, Soulé often tightens his position in the right half space but he does it at various heights taking up almost the entire strip of the pitch that goes from his frontcourt to the opponent’s area.
A practical example of Soulé’s desire to enter the field. (Data: SofaScore)
Soulé’s tendency towards dynamism leads him to be active both as an assistant when releasing the ball – as we will see – and in defining actions; in short, the Argentine tends to follow the flow of the action, trying to participate in the most disparate ways and times.
One of the symbolic actions of his omnipresence on the pitch is the ball he serves in depth for Marvin Çuni in the match at the beginning of October against Roma. Soulé, in fact, immediately showed up in the midfield circle after less than twenty minutes of the match. Here he receives the ball, adjusts it with a couple of touches while scanning the field in front of him and, with his left foot, serves it raised on the run of the Albanian center forward, placing it on his feet as if on a velvet cushion.
Çuni’s control is also very good, but the choice to move away to the right closes his shooting angle and takes away Soulé’s chance to score a great assist.
Soulé is, therefore, by far the most important player in Frosinone’s possession phase: in fact he acts as builder, finisher and finalizer. According to data from Kickest, not only is he the player who attempts the highest number of shots among the yellow-blue ranks, but also the thirteenth in the whole of Serie A, in which he also hit 5 between posts and crossbars, suggesting that he has room for improvement even in the scoring phase. finalization. Furthermore, with 8 goals and one assist, the Argentine has directly participated in 36% of Frosinone’s goals this season, albeit slightly underperformance compared to the expected data – it accumulated 3.62 expected assists. In terms of key passes, he accumulated 2.6 per game, on par with only Genoa’s Gudmundsson in Serie A.
Soulé is an entropic player, who even in a few spaces manages to produce plays that split defenses: we saw the ball that Çuni serves against Roma – not the only visionary play of that match – but the Argentine also has extraordinary qualities when dribbling. Two plays from him in Stirpe’s match against Hellas Verona show us both his great strength – dribbling in tight spaces – and what he can still improve on.
The first, around the half hour mark, is an essential but effective dribble in which, with a single touch from the outside, he clearly leaps past two defenders, entering the area and opening the ball at the far post. The shot, also very beautiful, leaves the goalkeeper immobile but hits the post.
If we want, the second action instead shows us the aspect in which Soulé can still improve: the finalization phase – however, with 6.43 expected goals products, both also in overperformance realizable.
In this situation, instead the Argentine is fed by a no-look by Reinier and enters the area in perhaps his favorite situation: off-centre on the right and with the ball on the left. The shot, narrowed to the near post to take time away from Montipò, is an ambitious solution but perhaps overworked and ends up on the post.
Soulé is a very technically gifted player who plays with awareness of this. His game is always very direct: when he gets into possession he beats his opponents in just a few touches if not directly with the first control and his plays are always aimed at obtaining an immediate advantage, even taking important risks. With these premises one would expect a player who is not always precise; instead, Soulé has a pass success rate of 77% (data FBref), slightly above average for the role.
A folkloristic aspect that tells us well about Soulé’s style: when asked specifically, he didn’t say that he had neither Messi nor Ronaldo as idols, but rather Eden Hazard, an absolute master of dribbling. Seeing him play, with his dribbling in which he confuses technique and physique, and his way of kicking, one can try to find something, even just potentially, of the former Chelsea player. Soulé is in fact capable, with his body feints and his ball-and-chain movements, of causing panic like few, or rather, like no one in Serie A: at the moment he is the player who has carried out the most dribbles by distance (3.8 per 90′), even ahead of champions such as Kvaratskhelia (2.6) and Leao (1.8) as well as more dribblers chaotic like Banda (2.7) and Ebosele (1.9).
Not even the most enthusiastic Soulé fans probably would have expected this impact with Serie A; perhaps he wouldn’t have expected it there either Juventus, who however will most likely be lucky enough to have him back in the first team next year. However, if a hypothetical trident with Chiesa and Soulé alongside Vlahovic could be very exciting for the Juventus fans – assuming that Allegri can and wants to deviate from his 3-5-2 – it is worth noting that in Juventus Soulé would not have the same volume of balls he now has in Frosinone and his tasks in the non-possession phase could increase significantly, moving him further away from the finishing area.
The Argentine, therefore, would also be asked to take on a more incisive role in the actions available to him. Surely, Massimiliano Allegri is already rubbing his hands at the idea of having him in the team. Luciano Spalletti would have done the same, given that Soulé also has an Italian passport. The coach had contacted him in the past with a view to a possible call-up, only to receive a refusal, also motivated by the regular call-ups that the Argentine has received for two years now from Lionel Scaloni. Despite having never yet made his debut, it is clear that Soulé is presented with the interesting prospect of becoming another member of Argentina’s long dynasty of left-handed playmakers. Something that probably already teases him enough.