Exploring Kosovare Asllani’s possible attacking impact for Milan Women and Sweden in Euro 2022 – scout report

Kosovare Asllani is a 32-year-old veteran Swedish international player who plays with the Spanish Primera División’s Real Madrid. Asllani had several other experiences at different clubs before playing with the Las Blancas. She started her professional career at Linköping, then she had a brief spell at NWSL’s Chicago Red Stars and returned to the Damallsvenskan and played for both Linköping and Kristianstads.

From 2012 to 2016, Asllani moved to France and had a relatively long experience at PSG and followed it with one season at Manchester City before getting back to Linköping, CD Tacón and then Real Madrid. This career can only prove how the demand for this player never ceased to exist, knowing that she was and is one of the most talented players in Europe, especially from an attacking perspective.

In fact, Asllani has just left Real Madrid this season and the news suggests that she has already reached an agreement with Serie A Women’s Milan. Therefore, this tactical analysis scout report will study the player’s characteristics and key skills while linking the findings to both her possible addition to Milan, her adaptability to Milan’s tactics, and her predicted role and contribution to the Swedish Women’s national team during UEFA Euro 2022.

Possible roles and positions at Milan and at Sweden during UEFA Euro 2022

Asllani plays in most attacking positions and her coaches usually employ her as an advanced playmaker, either in the 4-2-3-1 formation or in the 3-4-1-2 one as well. Moreover, Asllani is used to playing as a striker mainly in the 3-5-2 formation. In other words, Asllani’s strengths become more useful when she plays as a second striker, forming an attacking duo with another centre-forward. Apart from being responsible for scoring goals, Asllani’s main roles include playmaking and providing the final pass to her teammates, knowing that Asllani is an intelligent attacking player with great vision and passing accuracy.

If her move to Milan becomes a reality, Maurizio Ganz, Milan’s actual head coach, would find no problems in fitting Asllani to the system or vice versa. In other words, he would have an additional key attacking option to be used in the way he wants while guaranteeing the balance between attack and defence. Therefore, it is very probable that the team will play according to the 3-5-2 formation following Asllani’s arrival since Ganz usually prefers to play with a back-three. Asllani would form an attacking duo with Martina Piemonte exactly like what was done when Ganz had strikers like Valentina Giacinti and Natasha Dowie at his disposal.

Nevertheless, if the coaching staff decides to use a 4-3-3 formation to exploit the wingers abilities, Asllani would more likely be employed as a central midfielder with more attacking duties and less defensive ones or even as a left-winger. Therefore, a player like Asllani would certainly solve numerous attacking issues for Milan especially when knowing that such a player would provide quality and concretisation inside the final third.

Concerning UEFA Euro 2022 though, Asllani could possibly be used mainly in midfield and sometimes in attack as a second striker. But she would mainly be used as an advanced playmaker given that the team already has plenty of other excellent options for the striker’s role such as Stina Blackstenius and Lina Hurtig. Therefore, using Asllani just behind one or two of them would benefit the team more and provide the necessary attacking support.

As you can see in the following heatmap, Asllani covers the whole final third as she usually moves well with and without the ball to provide passing options in dangerous areas. Her dynamism in this area will surely be crucial as her movements can bring a lot of threat to opposing teams.

Goalscoring

Asllani has an average shooting accuracy of 42.2% and an xG of 0.45 per 90. These numbers explain that Asllani is not a striker by nature but rather a playmaker who works a lot to support her attacking teammates. Yet, the Swedish international has a great sense of goalscoring and finished the actions very well most of the time, especially when she positions herself well to receive the ball in key areas (which happens a lot).

In additio