Jelena Čanković: Why Chelsea picked up the Serbian this summer

Jelena Čanković has just moved to Chelsea Women, transferring from Rosengård to the Blues. She is a 27-year-old player who has got a fairly valuable footballing experience with various teams across Europe. She started her senior career at Spartak Subotica in Serbia before moving to Barcelona from 2013 to 2014. Indeed, she did not remain for a long period at Barcelona, yet such experience should surely have impacted Čanković’s personality and perhaps even her playing style.

She continued to progress even further at Ferencváros where she played more regularly from 2015 to 2017. Then, she passed two years at Växjö, Sweden, before going to Rosengård where she shined and put on some excellent performances to earn a big move towards the FAWSL champions, Chelsea.

A team like Chelsea doesn’t recruit players without extensive analysis and identification of the player’s strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, this tactical analysis scout report will try to explore the Serbian international player’s characteristics, her tactical strengths and weaknesses and how she can fit into Chelsea’s tactics and especially contribute to their European success.

Position and roles

Čanković is naturally a right winger who finds herself most comfortable when playing in this position but at the same time she retreats so often and contributes to the defensive phase with efficiency and therefore she won’t have problems adapting to Chelsea’s playing system.

She can fit into the team easily because she is a very dynamic player and knows exactly what to do when having the ball and moves well without the ball too. This dynamism will serve Chelsea a lot on the right wing because it will add a lot of quickness to an already excellent attack. Her roles will most probably include serving Sam Kerr with quality crosses especially after cutting inside.

At the same time, it is necessary to give some freedom to such a player to make use of her creativity and let her show her talent while serving the team. What would encourage Emma Hayes to give some freedom to Čanković in attack is that she is a responsible team player who usually favours her team over individual achievements, and this mentality is already a key to success.

Therefore, it is expected that Čanković will be a very useful signing for Chelsea and for the player herself if everything goes well. Moreover, Čanković can also be used as an advanced playmaker, the role that Fran Kirby interprets most of the time. Čanković played in that role previously as well and therefore she can represent a reliable replacement for that position. The following graphic just shows how Čanković covers most of the right flank and makes herself available both in attack and in defence with almost the same intensity.

Goalscoring and attacking skills

Čanković is a very talented player who doesn’t lose the ball easily when having it at her feet because she is an excellent dribbler and her quickness both in running with the ball and in dribbling makes it complicated for defenders to chase her or intercept the ball from her without committing a foul. This quality is rare in football and requires a lot of skills, concentration and quality.

Čanković has an overall dribbling success rate of 55.6%, a passing accuracy equalling 82.5% and passes to the final third accuracy reaching 69.4%. Some of these statistics surely need some improvements and playing in such a big team like Chelsea could give her a platform to improve in these areas and become an even better player in all aspects, but the move will also require her to do so.

In the following picture, we tried to show an example of one of Čanković’s goals from distance and how dangerous and efficient she can be from that right wing. As soon as she got the ball, she immediately aimed at cutting inside, getting past her direct opponent before shooting with power and precision towards the near post to confuse the goalkeeper who thought that she would naturally go for the far post.

One of Čanković’s most beautiful goals was scored from the right-wing as well but this time, it was a goal that showed another side of Čanković. She scored this goal thanks to intelligence, cold blood and tactical awareness of her surroundings and we will explain why.

Čanković had the ball on the right wing, fixed her direct opponent and could have directly aimed at dribbling past her but preferred to serve her teammate near the corner. When she got the ball back, she showed everyone that she was preparing herself to shoot before feinting her direct opponent with cold blood and skill. As soon as she made that dribble, she saw the goalkeeper covering the near post but being a bit advanced, which would make a chip shot towards the far post nearly impossible to save.

Čanković decided to shoot towards the far post immediately and executed it with extreme precision, scoring a magnificent goal that proves not only her intelligence and talent but also her quick decision-making and shooting accuracy. While doing some research on the player, one finds numerous similar goals to this one which were all scored from outside the box, with shots towards the far post after dribbling past the direct opponent. Although this became a little bit predictable, defenders and goalkeepers couldn’t find a way to stop it from happening mainly because Čanković is so quick and accurate when dribbling as she is rapid in deciding when to shoot.

Speaking of shooting accuracy, Čanković can deal very well with complicated situations and does not lose her focus easily even when she is surrounded by opponents. She proved this on several occasions and perhaps this action shows it even better. She received the ball via an opposition mistake, and even though she was surprised by the pass and wasn’t preparing herself to get the ball, she was still able to dribble past her opponent and curve the ball inside the net with extraordinary despite having plenty of opponents covering the view and disturbing her while shooting.

Čanković can also represent an excellent weapon for Chelsea in terms of set-pieces, as she can provide a variety of solutions on this aspect. For instance, she can perform right corner kicks very well. But most importantly, Čanković can skillfully shoot free kicks and score goals from set-pieces.

Indeed, Guro Reiten is already a very good set-piece taker. Yet, having an excellent alternative is always useful for a team like Chelsea who will need the services of Čanković in set-pieces anyways. As you can see below, the Serbian international can score close free-kicks with great accuracy and without necessarily using much power but rather technique to put the ball in a very angled spot that the goalkeeper can’t reach.

Key passes and vision

Čanković has outstanding vision that matches her excellent passing ability. Without exaggeration, she can provide some wonderful key passes from every position and with extreme accuracy — mainly because she knows exactly how to direct the ball in the trajectory that she wants with the adequate technique and necessary speed/power.

For attacking players, this can be so important since it helps a lot in making assists and in contributing to creating many goalscoring chances per match. In the following picture, Čanković opted for a long pass with the exterior part of her foot to meet the striker’s movement at the right time and with the needed accuracy. Her decision-making was key in this example as it helped her gain some precious seconds because this type of pass was quicker for her to execute than a normal cross, which then helped the striker have more time before defenders reach her. Some small details like these might seem without value but are actually fundamental and can even decide the result of a match because they differentiate a normal player from an intelligent/skilful/world-class player.

In this next example with Serbia against Bulgaria, she received the ball in a situation that invited a shooting attempt. Čanković prepared herself to shoot and she was about to execute the action, she saw her teammate running towards the middle of the box while getting away from her marker. Čanković didn’t change her movement and continued her preparation for a shot but in the end, she confused everyone by providing a long pass towards her teammate who was then completely free.

Conclusion

Chelsea made a very promising recruitment this summer by acquiring the services of Jelena Čanković, and the coaching staff, along with the players should do their best to help her fit into the team and be comfortable on and off the pitch to get the best out of her.

Chelsea will surely benefit from an added value in attack and an additional weapon that promises to be useful in FAWSL and especially in the UWCL where Chelsea are lacking some quality and personality to surpass teams like Barcelona, Lyon, Bayern Munich, PSG, Wolfsburg and others especially when it comes to finals because they’ve proven that they can win against any team during the competition but not in finals.