Martina Piemonte has just joined Milan Women during 2022’s winter transfer window coming from Fiorentina after playing for a plethora of other teams such as Verona, Sevilla, Roma and Real Betis. Despite being just 24 years old at the moment, the Italian player has got a lot of experience especially from her spells in the Spanish Primera División, and that’s one of the things that make her a quality signing that can prove to be very beneficial for the Rossonere ahead of their competition with Sassuolo, Inter, Roma and Fiorentina for the second spot, especially when knowing that Milan’s management and coaching staff decided to loan their attacking star, Valentina Giacinti, to Fiorentina. In fact, Milan also sold their advanced playmaker, Verónica Boquete, to Fiorentina following the tension and misunderstanding between her and the coach, Maurizio Ganz.
Therefore, in this tactical analysis scout report, we will analyse and explore Piemonte’s key skills and strengths while trying to identify how she can replace Giacinti in a useful way, given that both players have different playing styles and different characteristics. The analysis will therefore aim at clarifying Piemonte’s characteristics.
Position and roles
Martina Piemonte has played as a striker for all the teams she’s played in, and her contribution was usually impactful especially when she was physically and mentally ready. She is a player who is physically very strong and who knows how to act during aerial duels and attacking duels, in general. Piemonte wins an average of 56,9% aerial duels, as she also times her attacking movements very well whether during set-pieces or even in open play.
What characterises Piemonte and distinguishes her from a player like Giacinti is her passing skills, vision and most of all, her continuous backward movements especially on both wings, as you can see in the heatmap above, in order to act as a station. To succeed at that, Piemonte needs to be physically strong and has to master playing with her back towards the goal, and that’s what she is completely great at. When receiving the ball in such situations, she always makes sure to protect it very well with her body and rarely loses it. As you can see in this example, Piemonte covers the ball very well and always makes sure to scan the area that surrounds her to know if there is a marker planning to anticipate or intercept the ball. After scanning, she applies the “necessary measures” to keep her opponent away from the ball, by simply putting her back against the marker and helping with her hand to keep the distance between the player and the ball.
This characteristic can be exploited very well by the whole squad if they become aware of such strengths in their new striker. Moreover, Piemonte is often attentive to not fall in the offside trap and reads her teammates’ passes very well.
Goalscoring and attacking movements
A striker’s main mission is surely scoring goals and although Piemonte is not very much known for that, as she passed through some difficult moments in her career that didn’t allow her to have continuity in scoring goals, she has always proven that she can be an excellent goalscorer. The player has the sense of the goal and has been able to score some different types of goals in her career so far even though the number of her goals decreased in the last few seasons. Her best seasons in terms of goalscoring were from 2012 to 2017 during which she scored ten goals with Romagna, 28 goals in 43 games at San Zaccaria, and 11 goals in the 2016-2017 season with Verona.
Given the big change of atmosphere, playing style, lifestyle and level of teams that came with her transfer to Sevilla, Piemonte struggled a little bit to find her best form and be able to score as many goals as she did in Italy. She scored six goals in twenty games, six goals during her period with Roma and Real Betis. It is also true that she didn’t score goals during her 12 games at Fiorentina, yet this can represent a motive for her to bounce back at Milan especially when knowing that the atmosphere would probably fit her personality and playing style better.
Piemonte proved several times that she can score goals using her left foot without problems as her left foot accuracy is relatively good for a striker despite being a right-footed player. You can see how she was able to score this goal against Atlético Madrid while shooting with power and precision.
As we mentioned above, Piemonte’s movements are often intelligent in the final third. In this example, she knew exactly when to surprise the high defensive line and ask for the ball behind them while waiting for her teammate to launch the pass to accelerate immediately and therefore find herself alone in front of the goal. At Milan, midfield players like Christy Grimshaw, Greta Adami and Refiloe Jane can work with Piemonte on these types of actions and train on certain plays to apply during games, since Piemonte can be very dangerous if Milan exploit her tactical awareness in the best of ways.
Not only in open play situations but also during set-pieces, Piemonte can be very effective and powerful since she is excellent in escaping from marking and exploiting her strength in beating anyone trying to stop her from reaching the ball. In addition, you can tell from watching her that Piemonte’s idol is Zlatan Ibrahimović, as she focuses a lot on winning such duels while being aggressive during such situations. In this example, it was clear how she remained far away from the middle of the penalty box on purpose in order to start running as soon as the free-kick is played. Given that she knows how complicated it is to stop her when she is running towards the goal, she exploits that aspect in her favour and uses this method frequently, as it proved fruitful on many occasions including this one.
Assists, team play and ball protection
Another aspect that differentiates Piemonte from other strikers is her ability to provide key passes and create goalscoring chances when she happens to be outside the penalty box. Piemonte’s passing accuracy rate is 65.6% and although she can improve this average in the near future, it should be said that her vision and passing abilities are excellent. She can provide some very accurate and especially creative passes to her teammates in attack, like in the example shown here when playing for Fiorentina. She opted for the best possible passing option when choosing to chip the ball over the whole defence in a manner that allows Daniela Sabatino to be in a perfect goalscoring situation.
Yet, what lacks in her passing performances is the continuity of accurate passes per match. This means that Piemonte needs to keep her concentration high more often when she passes the ball to be even more effective in terms of playmaking. For instance, being able to provide key passes like in the example shown here regularly and with the right timing and adequate accuracy while avoiding the offside position of her teammate can make Piemonte an exceptional striker. What is even more excellent in this example is that her key pass was made using her weaker foot as well, which shows how comfortable Piemonte is when using both feet.
Conclusion
Piemonte can be a very good replacement for Giacinti in this second half of the season for Milan Women and in the future, she can even compose an excellent attacking duo alongside Giacinti if the latter returns to Milan after her loan spell finishes, creating one of Serie A Women’s powerful attacking duos. Her characteristics can be very useful for the Rossonere and if she avoids injuries, we can expect to see a lot of solid performances from the Italian player soon.
