The Lecce captain is one of the best defensive midfielders in Serie A.
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of central midfielders, that endangered species that ducks in front of defenders to protect them and let the weight of an offensive maneuver yet to be created slip off their shoulders? The elegance, the touch of the ball, the ability to send attackers on goal with home runs hit with his feet? Maybe it’s all these things put together that have created the sporting myth of director, a game organizer who reads the action two or three passages in advance of its actual development.
Directors we become, so at least they teach us the great stories of the role as Pirlo o Pizarroyet for a player to play in that role we require as a first requirement that he has class. Who would imagine Tonali or Anguissa as directors? At the same time, Brozovic’s injury has shown us a new nuance in Calhanoglu’s technique, forced to play centrally with excellent results.
Morten Hjulmand isn’t exactly the first player classy that would come to your mind, I know, but it’s him we need to talk about to understand how the influence on the game doesn’t come only from technique. How, that is, football is not only instinct but also reason, prudence, experience. Hjulmand is 23 years old and since the beginning of the season he has been the captain of Lecce, which is enjoying an excellent season also thanks to him – at the time of writing this piece he is fourteenth, +10 ahead of the safety zone.
Unlike the classic number five with a short step and full of embroidery, Hjulmand plays first for protection of the defence. Of the teams that are embroiled in the fight for salvation, Lecce is the best defense – 24 goals conceded – and if in part it is a fact that can be explained by the exceptional performances of Umtiti and Baschirotto, and by the reliability of Falcone between the posts , Hjulmand’s contribution is not negligible. His essential game cleans up Lecce’s first construction but above all triggers its transitions.
Baroni’s Lecce is a team that prefers to defend high on the field and in a very aggressive way (9th for PPDA and 4th for intensity of re-aggression, according to the data Soccerment) and only later, if the first pressure is unsuccessful, does he move back and defend positionally. In this context Hjulmand’s ability to defend large portions of the pitch, both forwards and backwards, is a great weapon. Second the data of Fbref it is in the 2% of players who intercept the most passes in Serie A – 2.27 every 90′ – and in the 17% of those who win the most tackles – 2.77 every 90.
Hjulmand is tall but doesn’t dominate his opponents physically – he weighs just 72kg. His step is slow and phlegmatic, with a calm that borders on wisdom: the way he uses his body to block the passing lines has to do with intelligence. Often recovers the ball without going through physical contact, and it is in those moments that Hjulmand seems immersed in mental trips de The Queen of Chessin which the protagonist Anya Taylor-Joy project into reality the scenarios that hide behind the movement of each pawn on the chessboard.
When cut out athletically he recovers through the reads.
It’s hard to love players like Hjulmand. Players from whom you can’t expect flashy plays or moments of omnipotence, to whom individual highlights videos do not do justice. Try looking at any compilation of Hjulmand’s actions: none will leave you enthralled. Sometimes seems to be moving too slowly for context around her, her very long and fragile legs. He is 23 years old but the posture with which he drags himself back into position after a counter-attack makes him look older than Busquets. Watching him play the full 90 minutes though, Hjulmand retains the charm of those tamers who charm snakes with music.
Thus Hjulmand puts order out of chaos: in every action he takes the most rational, reflective, spiritual choice. His way of passing the ball – he takes very few risks, he almost always plays horizontally – or the sagacity with which he touches it several times even under pressure instead of exchanging it as before are in contradiction with the Zeitgeist of contemporary football. More than an Instagram reel, perhaps a piece like this is needed to describe Hjulmand.
Baroni has built this year’s Lecce base on a very rigid 4-3-3, in which the offensive combinations concern the lateral triangles between full-back, midfielder and tall winger. While being a secure footing, therefore, it is rare to see Hjulmand involved in the ball lap on the trocar. The Danish, second Fbrefit is in the 21% of midfielders who attempt fewer passes in Serie A – 38.79 every 90′ – and who make fewer touches in the opposing area – 0.28 every 90′.
Certainly that of playmaking remains one of the most immature aspects of his game. In December there was talk of Inter’s interest in Hjulmand, and to date his future in an Italian big could go through an improvement in his involvement in dribbling. In closed spaces Hjulmand’s technique collides with structural limitations of his game – he is among the 56% of midfielders who make fewer progressive passes: only 4.71 every 90′ – and it is no coincidence that the most convincing performances came against top-ranked teams – such as the September match against Naples.
Hjulmand’s influence on Lecce’s game – he has already contributed four assists this year – is therefore more evident without the ball, in the moments in which the team raises the center of gravity and he leads the pressing. Against Milan, for example, one of the best collective performances of the season, la pressione di Hjulmand the man on Bennacer caused further tactical imbalances in the construction of a Milan that was already at the dawn of the crisis.
Not only that: in that match – in which second Sofascore made 41 touches, one key pass and won five tackles – Hjulmand also fed Baschirotto the cross for the momentary 2-0 goal. After the victory against Cremonese, in which Hjulmand provided another assist, Marco Baroni said: «Hjulmand is growing and making his way, we are happy. I tell him to read little and work hard». This year Hjulmand’s numbers in the finishing phase have improved and as a mainly defensive interpreter he is still back in 8% of midfielders with more assists every 90′.
Growth is an overused topos, yet it describes the impact that Hjulmand is showing on Lecce’s vertical game. In another exceptional match, played against Lazio, both comeback goals passed between his feet. I began by trying to tell il talento cerebrale di Hjulmand as opposed to the hyper-technical one of the directors of the 2000s. The magnetic attraction that seems to exert on the ball recovering it with an invisible force as if it were a Jedi knight.
Looking at such a velvety touch as the one that anticipates Di Francesco’s cross and leads Colombo to the goal, however, it makes me think that Hjulmand is trying to make us change our minds about him. A player capable of think plays like that can only be defined as a great defensive midfielder?
If there was a moral in this reflection on the readings of Wheelman and on his way of understanding football I would like it to sound like this. Someone says that sport is a mechanical-instinctive matter that can be reduced to men who repeat actions that are always the same and therefore internalize them. Well, if you meet someone who thinks like that, let him watch a game of Hjulmand, or at least tell him about his ability to think on the pitch as if he were at a an existentialist conference from the 40s.
However, the single gesture that best reflects his qualities remains the one that generates Strefezza’s equalizer in the 57th minute of the match against Lazio. The elegance with which the back arches and at the same time the foot opens to dictate the timing of the passage.
It’s a touch that tells all the finesse of Hjulmand’s game: a pass that may seem simple only after having had the coolness to harpoon a loose ball in midfield with a precise stop, having swerved on his partner Gonzalez, who was running towards the ball, and having opened up a space with a short run – with a second swerve – to crash towards Di Francesco’s cut.
In the last match played by Lecce, the victory in Cremona on Saturday afternoon, in the 58th minute Hjulmand collects the ball from a short corner kick by Strefezza and cushions it using the sole with the naturalness with which one could perform a dance step, hidden to the right just outside the penalty area. At that point he creates a parable that passes in front of Carnesecchi before ending up on the head of Baschirotto, who scores with his usual indescribable power. A goal identical to the one scored against Milan.
The Hjulmand-Baschirotto axis has already become Lecce 22/23’s signature move, an incredibly hipster team that has put all the big names in Serie A in difficulty.
In front of the microphones, Hjulmand’s words replicate the calm he expresses on the pitch. Interviewed by Dazn at the beginning of the season, he said he was “proud for the captain’s armband” and that he felt comfortable in Lecce: “it’s a fantastic city”. While he had always been the one to talk in conference at the beginning of November, when the team was experiencing a period of crisis in front of goal: “We know we have to shoot, but in Serie A it’s not easy,” he said. “We have the strength and the players to score, I don’t know if it’s a mental thing, we have to think about the football we know how to do, show our spirit on the pitch”.
During the January market Sky he had spoken of an offer close to eleven million from Southampton for Hjulmand. It seemed like another story written before it occurred: a small-medium Premier League that plunders its equivalent in Serie A. Instead, Lecce decided to keep Hjulmand, to rely on his simplicity and his ability to give order to entropy created in midfield. It’s hard to love players like Morten Hjulmand, we said. But it is precisely for such peculiar players, those who don’t steal your heart at the first check but who are worth watching for entire games, that even the Banter Serie A remains an interesting championship.