Amalie Thestrup: What Liverpool Women need? – scout report

Liverpool Women had a disappointing 2019/2020, culminating in relegation to the Women’s Championship after finishing bottom of the league. They have already brought in several players this summer in an attempt to rebuild and make an immediate return to the WSL, but one name who has really caught the eye is Denmark striker Amalie Thestrup, who has joined from Roma Femminile. This scout report will look at how Thestrup can fit into Liverpool’s tactics next season, whilst seeing how Liverpool can best use her in their attempts to get promoted next summer. The analysis will also see how Liverpool’s opponents next season could line up, and how Thestrup will help the Reds to beat them tactically.

Amalie Thestrup at Roma Femminile

In order to see how much of an impact Thestrup will have with Liverpool, this tactical analysis will first see how she played at Roma.

The first thing any team expects from their strikers is for them to constantly be on the front foot, and this is what we see in this image. Thestrup is moving forwards, and you can see from her body position how she is looking to create a passing option high up the pitch for Roma to get the ball into. You can see how, with Inter Women coming high up the pitch, there is space available for Thestrup to make this movement behind those players in the image, thereby ensuring that Roma can counter attack if they want to.

We can build on this here, in Roma’s game against Empoli. Again, Thestrup’s body position shows how she is running into the area to get on the end of any ball into the box. Again, she is moving behind the defenders, which means that she can get into promising positions before the defence are aware of her presence. This is something that all good strikers can do, because they see where the space is, and the best way to access it. She is aided by poor defending in this image, but the fact that she knows where to be, and constantly wants to attack forwards, is a key quality in her play.