In Conte’s national soccer team that has just earned its access pass for France the position of center forward seems to be held more and more firmly by Graziano Pellé. Aged 30, the attacker from Lecce has grown rapidly during their last year with Southampton and certainly he is today the Italian forward most suitable for the game system of  Juventus' former coach.

Pelle’s main feature is the ability to play facing away from the goal, making alot of flank play for the teammates, always with the first touch, facilitating insertion from behind. During the two soccer matches taken as an example, Chelsea- Southampton and Azerbaijan – Italy, Pellé performed as many as 26 flank plays of which 21 were successful, with a total percentage of 81%.Thanks to his powerful stature, 194 cm high, he succeeds in defending very skilfully his position and the ball (10 successful coverings out of 13 attempts), so that number 19 of the Saints team becomes dominant in this specific situation.

In his club this absolute supremacy in the flank play is even stressed by means of the systematic search for high balls that allows Pellè to display his second strong gift: aerial play. In the match with Chelsea Graziano performed 7 layoff headers and 8 aerial challenges, and won in 75% of them. So his role was decisive in the recovery and victory of his team with a chest assist  first time for the temporary equalizer by Davis at the end of the first time.

His aerial abilities is less exploited in the national team, where he has made only 1 layoff header and 2 challenges in the air losing both. Obviously, this depends on the different interpretation of the offensive combination of the Italian team, which prefers a low ball strategy, so that the Leccese forward is requested to move horizontally along all the attacking line,  and to go towards the ball to facilitate the insertion without the ball from behind of the teammates, as occurred in the 0-1 goal by Eder at Baku.

 

This great involvement in offensive game construction enables Pellè to play alot of balls showing a good insight into the game and a natural inclination to play first touch. With the Italian team he tried 20 passes with a positive percentage of 70%, whereas with Southampton 16 successful passes were only 50%. His most impressive feature is the frequent attempt to play first time in order to accelerate the action earning game time over the opponent: 39% of passes were performed without controlling the ball, 14 in 36, and 8 of them reached the teammate who took advantage of Pellè’s good pass. In the figure below, we show the areas of the field occupied by the striker during the match against Chelsea. We can see that both in the first and in the second half of the match, Pellè supports his team in different areas, not restricting on trying to attempt on goal, but also doing the “grunt work”, less flashy but more efficient.

 

 

Pellè shows to be very skilful also in his defensive positioning , with 4 recovered balls and 5 positive interceptions, and extremely generous in helping his teammate, but he can still improve his psychological attitude during the match. Indeed, Pellè succeeds in being the reference point when playing in his club, on which the team relies on him to face difficult moments, while in Conte’s Italian national team his attitude is still faint: only 4 vertical passes attempted in Azerbaigian compared to 10 passes versus Chelsea attest to a poor initiative and self confidence in a higher level context. Instead, the less frequent dialogue with his National teammates reveals that Graziano doesn’t feel to be a leader and a strength of this National team although he has all the necessary physical, tactical, technical and mental features.