Issa Kabore: How Man City’s promising prospect can star on loan at ‘long admired’ Troyes – scout report

Following his €4.5m move to the eventual 2020/21 EPL champions Manchester City from KV Mechelen in July 2020, Issa Kabore (180cm/5’11”, 70kg/154lbs) went on to enjoy a successful loan spell back with the Belgian First Division A side for the 2020/21 campaign. Now, it’s been announced that the right-back will go out on loan again for next season  this time joining the French club under City Football Group’s (CFG’s) ownership  Troyes.

When CFG acquired Troyes in 2020, their chief executive Ferran Soriano explained that they’d “had an interest in French football for some time” and had specifically “long admired” Troyes. Troyes will have earned plenty of admirers among French football followers last season, as they won Ligue 2 with the fourth-most goals, most xG, second-fewest goals conceded, highest average possession percentage and lowest PPDA of any team in France’s second-tier  justifying manager Laurent Batlles aggressive and dominant preferred playing style by delivering promotion to Ligue 1 for 2021/22, booking them a ticket to face the likes of Lille, PSG, Lyon, and Monaco next term.

In Kabore, Troyes have recruited someone who displays an aggressive and attacking style both in and out of possession. The 20-year-old is something of a risk-taker. Playing to his strengths will likely see Troyes reap great benefits in Ligue 1. However, they must be wary of Kabore’s weaknesses which were also on display during his time at Mechelen. In this tactical analysis piece, in the form of a scout report, we’ll provide tactical analysis of the key strengths and weaknesses in Kabore’s game. We’ll explain his role in Mechelen’s tactics last season, how it highlighted both good and bad parts of his game, and we’ll look ahead to next season, anticipating how we expect Kabore to perform in Troyes’ tactics and explaining how we believe Batlles and his team can get the best out of the Burkina Faso international.

Kabore’s role at Mechelen

Mechelen mainly played in either a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 shape last season. They pretty much exclusively played with a back-four, and Kabore exclusively played as a right-back within these systems. He enjoyed 1597 league minutes in the 2020/21 campaign, making him Mechelen’s second most frequently used right-back last term.

Similar to Troyes in France, Mechelen were quite an aggressive, attacking side last season. They finished the campaign with the third-most goals, fourth-most xG, second-most shots, fifth-highest possession percentage, and fourth-lowest PPDA of any team in Belgium’s top-flight.

Figure 1 shows us Kabore’s heatmap for the 2020/21 league season. We can use this heatmap to make some points about his game. Firstly, it’s clear that Kabore loves to get high up the pitch. This was particularly a requirement of his in Mechelen’s system in possession. The right-back had to get forward and provide the width for his side in both the middle and final third. As a result, he spent a lot of time in the positions this heatmap indicates, wide on the right-wing just inside of the opposition’s half and beyond  with this heatmap showing a lot of colour high on the right-wing almost as far as the byline near the opposition’s goal.

As well as tending to sit quite high, Kabore tended to be positioned fairly wide. Again, as this heatmap indicates, the 20-year-old spent plenty of time sitting even as wide as the sideline at times last term, but at the very least, he spent the vast majority of his time occupying a position in the wide, right-sided channel. Especially when his side were in possession, Kabore very rarely ventured inside, occupying spaces within the width of the penalty boxes  his role was to occupy spaces outside of that width.