West Ham United Women have a number of key players in their team, and all have played their part in the Hammers finishing in a comfortable eighth position in the WSL this season. German midfielder Julia Simic, who has only earned two caps for her national side, has been a big part of her side’s success this season. She has only featured in five games in 2019/2020 due to injury, but as we will see in this scout report, she still made an impact and showed qualities that were important to her team.
This tactical analysis will look at how Simic is integral to her team through her ability to find and play in the space, and also to play as the quintessential number 10, or central attacking midfielder. The analysis will also look at how she often plays the role of a pivot in her team’s attacking tactics, allowing them to create opportunities and be an attacking force in the league.
Playing in and creating space
The first point we will look at is how Julia Simic plays in space to allow her team to keep the ball. Before we get into the examples of this, we must first take a look at Simic’s heat map.
Whilst it is not the clearest heat map, due to her lack of games played, if you look really closely you can see the faint blue areas on it, and that shows us just how much ground she covers; virtually the whole pitch. Therefore, we can see that her ability and desire to run into space to create a passing option happens all over the pitch, and she can be wherever she needs to be.
Taking this into account, let’s now have a look at some examples of Simic creating space on the pitch.
