Johannes Handl 2019/20 – scout report

Within the last two weeks, I wrote two data analyses for Total Football Analysis. The first one was about talents in Austria’s second division while the last one was on about all the Austrian centre-backs who are or could be relevant for the Austrian national team. Both times Johannes Handl was one of the players who stood out as he has amazing statistics.

Because of this, I decided to write a tactical analysis in the form of a scout report on the 21-year-old centre-back of Austria Vienna II who also made in this season three appearances for the first team. In this analysis, we will look at the tactics and the style of the play of Handl to examine the reasons for his outstanding metrics.

Positioning and movements

Before we even start to talk in this tactical analysis about the on-the-ball abilities of Handl which make him so vital for the build-up of his team or his defensive qualities, we have to look at his usual positioning and his movements. Essentially, the 21-year-old defender always plays as the right centre-back of a back four when he plays for Austria Vienna II. We will only analyse his style of play for the second team as his appearances for the first team are still not enough to really see if he is capable of playing on that level.

In the shot below we can see the heatmap of the Austrian defender and we can perfectly see that he is always the right man of the central defence. Additionally, it gets visible that he is often positioned quite wide and also high up the pitch for a centre-back.

The two centre-backs of Austria Vienna II split during the periods of possession and organise together with one of the two defensive midfielders the build-up. This one either drops on the same height of the defenders or stays a bit higher to create a triangle. Meanwhile, both full-backs push forward to position themselves in a higher line. Because of these factors, Handl is positioned wide during the build-up as we can see in the example below in which the defensive midfielder drops to create a back three.

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