When Breel Embolo (187cm/6’1”, 88kg/194lbs) joined Monaco this past summer for €12.5m, the 25-year-old right-footed centre-forward declared that he’s “at the right age to fully develop” at Stade Louis II.
Fast forward almost three months from then, and we can safely say that the Swiss forward who’d formerly been playing in Germany’s Bundesliga with Borussia Mönchengladbach has got off to a positive start in Ligue 1, with three goals and two assists under his belt from nine league appearances, along with one goal scored in three UEFA Europa League games thus far.
The Swiss international appears inspired ahead of the upcoming FIFA World Cup, where he intends to start alongside the likes of Arsenal midfielder Granit Xhaka and Manchester City centre-back Manuel Akanji, having also grabbed two goals in the most recent international break, one coming in his country’s 2-1 win over Spain and the other coming in a 2-1 victory over the Czech Republic.
The centre-forward recently commented that he’s convinced “a big season awaits” his club side.
This tactical analysis and scout report will look at how Embolo has seamlessly fit into Philippe Clement tactics at Monaco to become a vital member of his new team.
We’ll provide an in-depth analysis of the main strengths and weaknesses of the striker who’s been described as a “nuisance” for Les Monégasques’ opponents in recent weeks by dissecting his role in Clement’s tactics in 2022/23 thus far, in addition to his recent performances with Switzerland and last season’s performances for Mönchengladbach.
Ligue 1 Data analysis
We’ll kick off this scout report with some data analysis.
We’ve analysed some data gathered via Wyscout to compare Embolo with all centre-forwards from Europe’s top-five leagues in the 2022/23 campaign so far.
The results can be seen in the bar chart we’ve made for figure 1.
Starting with defending and aerials, we see that Embolo engages in a relatively high number of defensive duels and has an even better defensive duel success rate.
However, he also makes plenty of fouls compared to other forwards.
