Ivan Rakitić 2019/20 – scout report

Even though he was hailed as one of Barcelona’s best transfers in history by their own legend, Xavi Hernández, Ivan Rakitic has definitely seen better days at the Catalan capital. From a hero of the fans, he quickly went to being their scapegoat, a martyr for every bad day, every bad pass or a bad result. And as his time with Barcelona was seemingly coming to an end, his qualities are being seriously questioned by many.

For that reason, this tactical analysis scout report will aim to uncover Rakitić’s best traits and tactics with the usage of analysis and will bring you the Croatian’s full player profile along with his most important statistics.

Player overview

Ivan Rakitic is a 31-year-old Croatian midfielder who arrived at Barcelona in 2014 from Seville. Since then, he has been an indispensable piece of the Catalan puzzle and an important contributor to their overall success. His key traits compose of extraordinary passing abilities, relentless stamina and work-rate, exceptional defensive contributions, awareness and versatility.

Rakitić is a true box-to-box type of midfielder who provides the team with a lot going both ways. His long-range efforts and set-piece speciality also make him a big threat to the opposition outside the box. He is also calm, cool and collected and usually a player for big games.

He has been, however, guilty of often being too safe and pragmatical, contributing more to the team’s build-up rather than aiding their creativity and dynamism. But when all is said and done, Rakitić is a top-class midfielder on his day. This scout report will now use analysis to dissect his best traits in more detail.

Passing abilities

When it comes to Ivan Rakitić as a midfielder, we can say that he is not really a player of exceptional technical gift or one that simply awes you with his talent. Rather, he is the one to put in the work and get the job done. At times, that means he’ll do the simple things exceptionally well and often, those things get overlooked in fast-paced modern football games.

What Rakitić is best at, however, is definitely his passing game. Last season, the Croatian was seventh in the top five European leagues in total passes distributed and stood tall at 2480 while Chelsea’s Jorginho ranked first with 2947 (domestic competitions only). That means Rakitić sent out 80.55 passes per 90 minutes and did with incredible 92% passing accuracy.

And just so we can dismiss the backpassing myth right from the start, here are the passing styles of all Barcelona midfielders, including the newcomer Frenkie de Jong. The passes are differentiated according to the direction so we have forward, backward and lateral passes.

As we can see from the graph, Rakitić is the second-best midfielder when it comes to sending passes forward with 35% and just behind De Jong who’s on 39%. He is also the second-lowest back passer in the team with 15%, tied with De Jong and just behind Sergio Busquets who’s on 13%.

But when we take a closer look at his passing abilities, we can see that Rakitić’s skill set is best utilised in fueling the build-up and stabilising the game when needed. In other words, regaining control and calming down the opposition’s aggressiveness. We can conclude that from his passing type graph that you can see below.

When compared to the other La Liga midfielders with over 1000 minutes, we can see that he is not among the most direct passers of the ball nor that he sends extremely long balls very often. Switching the play and swapping sides, sure, but usually, he’s the perfect midfielder for the quick and short passing tactics that Barcelona enjoy.

But this