Flavius Daniliuc’s (188cm/6’2”, 79kg/174lbs) young life in professional football reads as a very eventful one. The right-footed Austrian centre-back started out at Admira Youth before moving to Rapid Youth in 2010 and shortly after, he joined the Real Madrid youth ranks in 2011.
He ended up switching European giants in 2015 when he moved from Madrid to Bayern Munich. He never made a first-team appearance for Bayern but did play an important role in two UEFA Youth League campaigns — in 2019/20, guiding Bayern through the group stage unbeaten and into the Round of 16 when they narrowly lost out on penalties to Dinamo Zagreb. Daniliuc was the captain of that team.
The nomadic Daniliuc spread his wings once more when he left Bayern and made his move to Ligue 1 with Nice in the summer of 2020. In France, he laid down the first building blocks of his life in senior football but never really cemented a place in Les Aiglons’ starting eleven. This leads us to 2022, when just days before the summer transfer deadline, Daniliuc departed Nice and embarked on a trip to another new destination for him — Italy’s Serie A, where he’ll play with newly-promoted Salernitana.
Daniliuc has lived a life so far, to say the least. He’s got a lot of experience in his young career — and a unique experience to that of many others. This ultimately counts for little if his potential doesn’t actually manifest in senior football but for us, there’s a lot to like about Daniliuc. He’s still just 21 years old and has emerged as a leader a lot of where he’s been in the past — captaining Bayern’s U19s, Austria’s U19s when he was there, and most recently Austria’s U21s as well.
This, along with the brave and bold decisions he’s taken in his young career, hints at a strong character and leadership ability but what else is there to note about Daniliuc? Why should you care about him and his €5m move from Nice to Salernitana?
This Flavius Daniliuc tactical analysis and scout report aims to provide some in-depth analysis of Daniliuc’s game based on his time at Nice. We’ll aim to highlight some key strengths and weaknesses in the young centre-back’s game, the roles he played in Nice’s tactics during his time in France and why we feel he retains the potential to be an exciting player.
Daniliuc on the ball in wide areas
Though primarily a centre-back, Daniliuc played almost half of his minutes at right-back during his time at Nice and even got some minutes at left-back. This will skew data a little bit when comparing his performance with other centre-backs due to the very different role he sometimes played.
Regardless of whether he was playing as a centre-back or a full-back, though, it remained consistent that Daniliuc was quite heavily involved in the early possession phases. He is perhaps a bit of a safe passer too much of the time as he has the ability to drive the team forward and break lines more frequently than he does. Nonetheless, this has still been a prominent part of his game.
When deployed at right-back, a big part of Daniliuc’s game was to drive the ball and team forward into the opposition’s box, breaking the last defensive line with his passing and/or carrying.
Daniliuc didn’t bomb it up and down the wing all game in the fashion you might expect from PSG’s Achraf Hakimi, for instance, but he is quite quick and agile with good stamina to offer options on the wing throughout the game in more advanced positions and deeper positions.
It was common to see Daniliuc remain quite deep during build-up and the ball progression phase, offering a short passing option to the side of his centre-backs and midfielders who could get his head up and use his long passing ability to get the team forward into a threatening position.
We see an example of Daniliuc providing a short passing option to the side of his midfield teammate while playing at right-back in figure 1. Where many full-backs might be found in the most advanced line of attack looking to provide width there at this stage, Daniliuc remains a little bit deeper, offering an option to the side and slightly behind the ball carrier.
After receiving the ball and attracting some pressure, the passer who played the ball to Daniliuc in the first place makes a run out wide dragging a defender with him while one of Nice’s forwards begins making a move in behind the nearest defender. Daniliuc spots this movement, as we see in figure 2, lofting a through ball into the runner’s path to progress his team to the edge of the opposition’s box.
