Mads Emil Madsen at LASK Linz 2020/21 – scout report

Mads Emil Madsen is one of the most interesting signings in the Austrian Bundesliga in this summer transfer window as he joined LASK Linz from the Dane club Silkeborg IF. The 22-year-old has been with the club from an early age, making his debut for the senior team and therefore the move to LASK Linz is the first transfer of his career.

At the time of releasing this tactical analysis in the form of a scout report, LASK Linz played two competitive games to kick off the 2020/21 campaign. The first one was in the ÖFB Cup in which the young Dane got subbed on to play 13 minutes while he sat for 90 minutes on the bench during the opening matchday of the Austria Bundesliga.

In this analysis, we will look at the qualities of the 22-year-old central midfielder and check how he will fit into the tactics of LASK Linz.

System of LASK Linz

Since Oliver Glasner took over LASK back in 2015 their preferred system is to play with a 3-4-3 formation and show direct and vertical football. This hasn’t changed under the coach of the last season Valérien Ismaël and also the newly appointed head coach Dominik Thalhammer stick to the same philosophy.

In this system, the central midfielders are key for the success of the team as they only operate with two men in the centre. Their two central midfielders are tasked to support the three defenders and win the second ball after the typical long passes towards the central striker. Marko Raguž is their number one striker and one of their central tactics is to find the tall forward with long balls to then win the second ball and start the counter-pressing respectively. The two wingers as well as the two central midfielders are very important for the fight of the second ball as they are the players who are the closest to Raguž.

Out of possession, LASK Linz prefer to operate with a high and man-orientated press. We can see that one of the central midfielders tends to join the three forwards during the press while the other one stays slightly deeper to give them some protection. To simplify, the more advanced central midfielder mostly looks after the opposition’s defensive midfielder while the deeper one tries to occupy the important space behind the players who execute the press and meanwhile marks the opposition’s No. 10.

In recent seasons, Peter Michorl and James Holland were the two preferred players for these positions and one of the best midfield pairings in the Austrian Bundesliga. Michorl is the more creative one who more likely joins the forwards during the press while Holland is defensively stronger. Even though they got eliminated from the UEFA Europa League in the recent season by EPL giants Manchester United, they showed throughout the campaign in this international competition that they are an incredibly solid midfield pairing and they perfectly fit into the tactics.

Bundesliga side Werder Bremen were interested in signing Michorl, but LASK were able to keep hold of him and they signed with Lukas Grgić and Madsen, two additional central midfielders.

Madsen’s positioning and movements

In this second part of this tactical analysis, we examine in which areas of the pitch the Danish midfielder performs his actions regularly. The 22-year-old is a player who loves to have the ball at his feet and tries to help defenders during build-up. As we will see in the other parts of the scout report, he is technically gifted and is the ideal player to organise the progression of the ball.

In the heatmap below for all his appearances in the highest Dane division during the 2019/20 season for Silkeborg IF it stands out that he is mainly positioned in the centre of the pitch as I already mentioned. Also, he doesnt just stay deep, but also moves further up the pitch as the attacks of his team progress. Furthermore, we can see that he is slightly more often in the right half-space, but still can be found quite frequently in the centre or the left half-space.

As we will see in the next chapter of the tactical analysis, the young Dane has a great vision to detect runs of his teammates quite quickly and then find them with decent passes. To give himself more time and space on the ball, Madsen often drops quite deep to collect the ball from the defenders. By doing so, he positions himself out of the block of the opposition and creates some distance between him and the opponents. That means that he can get on the ball, move with it a few yards forward to have an open body positioning and see the whole game in front of him.

In these situations, he reminds me a bit of Thiago who has been a key player for Bayern Munich in this role and helped them win the recent edition of the UEFA Champions League. However, we can see in the image below an example in which Madsen comes deep to receive the ball from his defenders and separated himself from the opponents to have space and dribble forwards for a few yards.