A surprising and risky decision, but one worth taking.
There are football marriages almost written in destiny, where a person and a team have so many tactical and emotional affinities that one wonders who or what had put a spoke in the wheels so that the union took so long to arrive. The cases where the common narrative, romanticism or geographical origins come to fruition, transforming into Not that Sooner or later… are actually rare, magnified by the perfection and completeness of finally seeing that athlete wear that shirt that fits him so well or that coach cheering for a goal together with the your people in the his stadium even when of his there is nothing. On the other hand, there are transfer market operations that are incomprehensible at first glance, where the question marks that arise spontaneously are followed by firm points, at the conclusions of sentences already written a priori. Gianluca Scamacca to Atalanta belongs to the second category.
Even in the photos published by the official channels, the Nerazzurri shirt seems to have been added in post-production, as if to hide the tattoos on the neck and torso of the 24-year-old from Fidene. It never was imaginedit wasn’t either thought neither view in Gasperini’s system. Yet it is not the Roma of his dreams or Inter, which by status and necessity seemed the first suspect to pick up the pieces of Scamacca cracked by the Premier League, to bring back to Serie A one of those talents difficult to contain and support, party first to Eindhoven and then to London to be able to return as a prodigal son. In this exchange between love requested and received, Atalanta represents an opportunity to restart.
To say that, from the first statements, Scamacca was dying to come to Bergamo or couldn’t wait to closely observe the progress of the Gewiss Stadium works is objectively specious. Forgetting that we are talking about professional athletes and not entities emanating from the fan’s imagination, the seriousness with which the Roman striker spoke for the first time as an Atalantino will have made the incurable passion for football turn up their noses. If there was a moment, only one, in which Scamacca showed pride and genuine enthusiasm for wearing the Atalanta shirt, however, it was in the most important moment, when have been asked the impressions aroused by contacts with Gian Piero Gasperini: “I have hidden qualities that he sees though. This is the thing that struck me the most. Because when a third person sees them, it’s something that strikes me”.
Almost a grimace, a sketchy smile. Hidden, indeed.
By “hidden” did the coach from Grugliasco mean arrows still kept in Scamacca’s quiver? Or throw without hitting the target continuously? Serie A, the Coppa Italia and the Europa League 2023/2024 will give a clearer answer, but what has already been seen of This Scamacca and of this Atalanta make the mixture potentially explosive.
The ability to associate in the short term and to identify filtering traces of Andrew Petagna; the ability to protect the ball with his back to goal and act as a bank as a basketball pivot and to transform all the power into kinetic energy when finishing on goal Duvan Zapata; the impactful and ravenous personality of those who are aware of being able to show much more than what the present manifests Rasmus Højlund: Gianluca Scamacca has, at least since the year in Ascoli, demonstrated that he possesses parts of each of the center forwards of the Gasperini era.
Paradoxically, the player most comparable to the class of ’99 is the one furthest in time, that Petagna from whom, after 28 goals in two seasons with SPAL, the same finishing ability has always been expected without there being a context functional to his strengths (which, incidentally, do not coincide with those of a gunner): like the former AC Milan striker, it is probable that Scamacca will be the offensive director of Atalanta to come. The 86 kg distributed over 195 cm in height would make him the stereotype of the classic center forward but he won’t be a goal scorer, or in any case he won’t solo from the goals, that the Nerazzurri experience of the former Sassuolo will have to be judged. Otherwise such an amount would not have been invested for a player who, of the 8 goals he scored last season with West Ham, scored 5 in the random Conference League.
Regardless of injuries, the Hammers they were the worst that, in terms of football, could happen to Scamacca, who at the time of the choice perhaps made the charm of the English championship weigh more than necessary on the scales rather than the search for a project capable of enhancing it. This is not the time to determine who a player is improve between him, Danny Ings and Michail Antonio but certainly the last two were more suited to the style of play of Moyes.
Gianluca Scamacca
Good Linkup
Fierce Shot
Strong
Scores from any range
Scores half chances
Good Header
22 years old & most likely cheaper than Nunezpic.twitter.com/YxGVYRHrGM— UTD JAVA (@UtdJava) May 16, 2022
England has perhaps made us forget how technical Gianluca Scamacca is.
Scamacca thus ended up distorting rather than adapting, but the numbers of fbrefparameterised on 90′, and performance with Irons do not depict a footballer whose talent has been stolen by the Nerdlucks, quite the opposite: counting only the Premier League and avoiding including “doped” data from the Conference League, Scamacca was at the top among offensive players in terms of volume and quality of long throws (2.04 attempts with 81% success: 79th and 97th percentiles, respectively) but also for tackles won and attempted in the final third of the field, an indication of a moderate disposition to pressure. The work of connecting with the wingers and availability for first pressure are daily bread for any Gasperini striker, especially for the central reference.
The conviction that a central striker in Gasperini’s Atalanta should be judged exclusively by his goals at the end of the season is never valid, not even when we are talking about Zapata for the two-year period 2019-2021, i.e. the primary finisher of an offensive machine without equal in the history of the Serie A but which also benefited from Muriel’s hyper-efficiency. Even in a subdued season like last, Scamacca did better than his team expected goals (+0.46 in the Premier League after the +4.87 collected with Sassuolo): Atalanta’s prospect of accumulating as much potential and talent as possible, even untapped, and putting it in Gasperini’s hands is one of the most intriguing puzzles of the next Serie A. of which Scamacca is one of the main pieces. Gianluca himself, on the other hand, is a game of patience, where the elements are scattered: what order to give the tiles to complete the picture?
If not in terms of construction and mechanisms, at least in terms of distances in the opposing half, Gasperini’s Atalanta is closer to Dionisi’s Sassuolo than Moyes’ West Ham, simply because there are more men involved in the finishing area . One can imagine a Scamacca again more involved at the level of you touch, of supports in the short term and able to vary on the trocar to act as a third man in the ascent of the ball. The touches in the area in the last two years are almost superimposable (3.74 in Sassuolo, 3.69 at West Ham) but the total ones show a very different global reality: 33.9 in Emilia, 26.5 in east London.
Even the types and ways of moving up the field via Scamacca have changed radically: in Sassuolo Scamacca received every 90′ 6.26 progressive steps and distributed 1.51, while in West Ham those received were 4.66 and those distributed 1.65. At the Mapei Stadium we saw a version of Scamacca as a creative link on the frontline, unpredictable and courageous in his choices both in front of and behind the goal; at the London Stadium a more minimal appearance of Scamacca was (little) appreciated, called to exploit the instinctive mobility along the axis perpendicular to the goal line as a terminal and not as an origin.
In the transition from Sassuolo to West Ham, Scamacca found himself having to keep the ball more and move more with it (Data: Opt via fbref)
Like invocative and prophetic mantras, Gian Piero Gasperini has always reiterated between conferences and interviews the key concepts that must characterize, according to his vision, a productive offensive phase: fill the area consistently (see the abandonment of Boga’s evolutionary project) and with as many men as possible (two cruisers like Zappacosta and Bakker will facilitate the task), execution speed e ballistics. Scamacca perfectly adheres to two of the three principles, and the missing is functional so that teammates can compensate for the individual’s shortcomings.
For variety, difficulty coefficient, distance from the goal and opponents between the Roman and the goal, Scamacca’s right foot and header took no prisoners. In the Premier League average shot distance taken by Scamacca was 18.7 meters (6th percentile), in the two seasons in Emilia 17.4 (29th percentile) and 17.6 meters (27th percentile): imagine Gasperini with his mouth watering at the idea of the opposing defensive line, worried by the ‘deep attack by Lookman or Touré, who concede a tenth of a second of time too much in Scamacca to charge the shot he risks not straying too far from Atalanta’s ideas and from obsessions by Gianluca.
Scamacca did not suddenly lose the finisher quality in England, on the contrary: in the Premier League there were 2.33 shots created for his teammates per game, in Sassuolo they were 2.39. On the contrary, the 1.36 direct passes in the final third recorded in the English capital could be more useful in Bergamo, the result of a verticality on the opposite constructive spectrum compared to De Zerbi’s dribble in which Gasperini’s structure should act as via media. Zappacosta, The Roon, Buyers, Bakkersoon The Ketelaere (the 1.05 shots on goal every 90′ in 2021/2022 would have been the 12th value of last Serie A), Lookman e Touré: At various distances and areas of the pitch, Atalanta’s battery of shooters has remarkable quality and depth.
Why did Atalanta choose Scamacca? Because apart from a weak foot to trust in the finalization phase (in the last two years no goal has come with a left-footed player, and the tendency is to be corrected like a leaning tree to be straightened) and a less dominant aerial game in the Premier League than in previous years , for which finding the home air of the Serie A skies (56.7% of aerial duels won in 2021/2022, 92nd percentile among attackers) can only do good, Gianluca has already demonstrated in his career at least in one context that he can be anything.
He was once a creator, another finisher, and yet another finisher. He was at times, but never all at once. At 24 he is no longer young, he has already experienced heavenly lights and hellish darkness on and off the pitch. Because the qualities may not be hidden, but the sum of them is yet to be discovered. It’s time to put it all together, to create a potentially explosive mixture.