Oumar Solet Scouting Report At RB Salzburg 2020/2021 – Who Is RB Salzburg’s Biggest Summer Signing?

Who Is Oumar Solet?

RB Salzburg is renowned for producing exceptional talents in their youth academy and then selling them for substantial fees, such as Xaver Schlager and Hannes Wolf, who both currently play in the Bundesliga.

Also, bringing in young talents for little money to ultimately sell them for outstanding transfer fees.

The most famous examples of that are Erling Haaland (Borussia Dortmund), Sadio Mané and Naby Keita (both Liverpool).

During the summer transfer window of the 2020/21 season, they lost only one key player, Hee-chan Hwang, who moved to RB Leipzig, while bringing in two tremendous talents.

Samson Tijani (18 years old) joined them from a Nigerian club and will be on loan this season at Hartberg to gain his first experience in the Austrian Bundesliga.

The 20-year-old Oumar Solet was bought from Olympique Lyon for €4.5 million.

In this tactical analysis in the form of a scout report, we will look at Oumar Solet style of play, strengths, weaknesses and how he will fit into the tactics of RB Salzburg.

Oumar Solet Position & Style Of Play

In the first section of this tactical analysis, we will focus on the typical positioning and movements of Solet to get a better understanding of his basic style of play.

The young Frenchman played in nine games for Olympique Lyon B during the 2019/20 season in the fourth tier.

Interestingly, he played as a defensive midfielder and as a centre-back.

Below, we can see his heatmap for these nine games.

It is notable that, as a central defender, he primarily plays on the right side of the central defence, given his right-footedness.

Conversely, in slightly advanced areas, as a defensive midfielder, he is more active on the left side.

As we will see in the following part of this scout report, Solet is very confident with the ball at his feet, even when playing as a defender or defensive midfielder.

During his games, he actively demands the ball and tries to provide his teammates with good passing options.

Whenever he plays as a defensive midfielder, we can regularly watch him come deep to collect the ball, as shown in the example below.

The back four split wide, and Solet came deep to give the centre-backs the chance to position even wider to get on the ball.

At this point in the analysis, I would like to mention that in the first two friendly matches, RB Salzburg played when this article was written, Solet was subbed on to play in central defence on both occasions.

Once as left centre-back and once as a right centre-back.

Besides, Jesse Marsch has several options in the central midfield, meaning Solet will likely play as a central defender at Salzburg.

Oumar Solet Ball-playing abilities

Next, we will discuss the technical ability of the French defender, as this is a crucial quality for a modern defender.

As I mentioned earlier, the 20-year-old is very confident on the ball and is also right-footed.

He mainly uses his dominant foot to play passes, and therefore, his body orientation is most of the time prepared for passing.

This can be seen in the example below in his first appearance for RB Salzburg in the friendly against Ajax Amsterdam.

Logically, this makes it difficult for him to play as a left central defender, as he always needs to turn inward, as we can see above.

This limits him in his ball-playing actions.

However, on the other hand, he is extremely confident under pressure and is a player who is always looking for options through short passes or dribbles.

Even when the opponent rushes towards him, as shown in the example below, he remains calm, detects free space (in this case, the area behind the Ajax player who is putting pressure on him), and tries to exploit it with a run or pass.

Additionally, the aspect that he pulled off such a dribble in his first appearance for RB Salzburg demonstrates his confidence.

Solet generally likes to dribble and show his acceleration and pace to drive forward.

Furthermore, he can utilise his physical strength in case an opponent attempts to steal the ball from him.

These physical abilities, paired with his ball control, enable him to dribble with the ball.

The Frenchman completes, on average, 54.17% of his 5.66 attempted dribbles per 90 minutes.

These numbers show us that he has the confidence to start several dribbles per game and additionally has the qualities also to complete them.

We can see below an example as he advances with the ball at his feet to enter the space between the strikers and four midfielders in the opposition’s 4-4-2 formation.

Solet is able to detect free space in the formation of the opponent, as seen in the situation above, and attempts to exploit it with dribbling.

His weakness in those situations is that he occasionally misses the perfect moment to pass the ball and holds onto it for too long.

Sometimes, he puts himself in bad situations, as seen in the shot below.

In that situation, he could have passed the ball back to a defender and even had an option for a forward pass, but he wanted to take on an additional opponent who could then win the duel against Solet.

This is a perfect example that shows he has the self-confidence to take on opponents, but sometimes, he stays too long on the ball, which results in unnecessary losses.

The 20-year-old is not just a technically gifted defender.

He can make progressive runs and has proficient passing qualities for such a young player.

At Olympique Lyon B he played on average 63.58 passes per 90 minutes, which shows that he was one of their central players when it comes to the circulation of the ball.

2.83 of these passes were long balls, indicating that he prefers to find a solution through short passes.

Solet is not a player who frequently takes the risky option and shows good decision-making in most situations.

Due to that, he completes 88.13% of his passes when there is a perfect and quite secure option, continually seeking the progressive pass as we can see below.

Oumar Solet Defensive Abilities

Although the ball-playing qualities of defenders are now essential, their defensive abilities remain the central aspects of their game.

As we will see in this section of the tactical analysis, Solet’s defensive abilities are decent, but his speed and physical strength are particularly notable.

A central strength of the 20-year-old is that he remains calm in almost every situation and doesn’t seem to panic.

Instead, he always tries to force the opponent away from goal.

All these aspects can be seen in the example below in the friendly against Liverpool.

Solet wins 59.68% of his defensive duels, which is a solid value but not too outstanding and shows that he definitely has to continue working on his behaviour in defensive duels.

Furthermore, he makes 0.92 sliding tackles per 30 minutes of oppositional possession, indicating that he frequently goes to the ground to tackle.

As already mentioned, he has decent acceleration and speed for a central defender, which also helps him during the defensive phase as it makes it harder for his opponents to dribble past him, as we can see in the next shot.

He keeps up with the pace of the player on the ball to then make a decent sliding tackle.

Solet stands at 192cm (6′3″) and is physically strong, which helps him not just to shield off the opponent when he dribbles but also to use his body to recover the ball for his team.

A perfect example is visualised below as his opponent receives the ball and tries to get away from Solet with the first touch.

However, the 20-year-old reads the game well, makes a few steps to the side, blocks his opponent and gets on the ball.

We can see in this situation how he stays calm, reads the game well and utilises his physical power to win the ball.

However, besides his ability to win defensive duels, he also needs to work on his tendency to be sloppy at times.

While he appears to be, during possession, sometimes too self-confident, which leads to situations where he holds the ball for too long, during the defensive phase, we can also see him sometimes being a bit sloppy or overconfident.

In those moments, it looks like he would know that he has the necessary speed and physical power to keep up with his opponent, and therefore, he doesn’t focus entirely on the space he has to defend.

In the example below, he plays as a central midfielder, and his opponent starts a run to the inside.

Instead of taking a few steps to the side to deny the opponent the chance to enter the space between the defence and midfield, he opens up exactly that area for the opponent in possession of the ball.

Still, he and his teammate were able to keep up with the player in possession of the ball and then win it back.

Still, he should not become sloppy in the Austrian Bundesliga or UEFA Champions League, as the opposition will exploit such mistakes.

How Oumar Solet fits in at Salzburg

As mentioned earlier in this tactical analysis, he played in his first two games for RB Salzburg as a central defender.

Against Ajax Amsterdam, he got subbed on as left centre-back, and versus Liverpool, he moved to the right of central defence.

RB Salzburg’s two most frequently used formations in the recent season were a 4-4-2 and a 3-5-2, while they experimented with a 4-2-3-1 in recent friendly games.

Since they have several top-class central/defensive midfielders in Enock Mwepu, Mohamed Camara, Antoine Bernede, Ousmane Diakité, Majeed Ashimeru and Zlatko Junuzović, and with Nicolas Seiwald Youba Diarra, two additional promising players who can play in that position, it is unlikely that he will play in midfield in the upcoming season.

In the central defence, Maximilian Wöber is the clear number one, and since he is the only left-footed centre-back, he plays in almost every game as a left-central defender.

Solet showed that he could also play on the left side, but as he mainly uses his dominant right foot, he clearly prefers to play on the right side.

In this position, he faces competition from Jérôme Onguéné, André Ramalho, and Albert Vallci.

As Solet is also reasonably fast for a central defender, he can indeed also play as part of a back three.

In general, the Frenchman perfectly suits RB Salzburg’s tactics and philosophy due to his pace and game intelligence.

Additionally, he is very self-confident for a player of his age and can efficiently deal with pressure from the opposition.

It will be interesting to see how he will develop in the upcoming months.

Conclusion

Solet has the potential to be one of the following great players to find their place in one of Europe’s top leagues, having shown decent performances at RB Salzburg.

However, before that, he needs to work on his decision-making and defensive abilities to bring himself to the next level.

If Salzburg can keep all their centre-backs, they will have five quality central defenders of very high quality for the upcoming season, which means they can rotate more frequently when they have several fixtures per week.