Maxime D’Arpino at US Orleans 2019/2020 – scout report

As we saw with the previous analysis made on Amine Bassi, Ligue 2 has talented players who are waiting for the opportunity to play at a higher level, possibly in Ligue 1. After some research and exploring on the players in Ligue 2, another name caught my attention: Maxime D’Arpino.

Maxime D’Arpino is a 24-year-old French midfielder who plays for US Orléans and a product of Lyon’s youth academy. His path through the youth teams seemed a successful one,  he has caps for the U19 and U20 national teams, but after being loaned out to US Orléans in the 2017/2018 season, Lyon decided that they didn’t want to keep D’Arpino and ended up letting him leave for free to the Orleans club.

In this scout report we’ll take a look at Maxime D’Arpino’s performances for US Orléans this season, we will also compare him to other players in the same league and in superior divisions, in order to find out if the Frenchman is indeed ready to take the step up from Ligue 2.

Player profile

Maxime D’Arpino is a right-footed defensive midfielder who can play as a central midfielder as well. This season he mostly played as a part of a midfield duo in a 4-4-2 and 4-2-3-1 formation, stepping on more advanced or deeper areas of the pitch accordingly. In some games this season US Orléans used a 4-1-4-1 formation and D’Arpino played as a single pivot right in front of the defence. Whatever the formation used D’Aripino’s role in the team was always to be “in charge” of the game, dictate his team’s tempo, and act as a main reference in the build-up process.

In the image below we can see Maxime D’Arpino’s heat map for this season, it shows the areas that he ocuppied the most and gives us a good picture of where he operates on the pitch.

Maxime D’Arpino is not a destructive defensive midfielder, although he plays is part in defending as well, he mostly acts as a deep-lying playmaker or regista. Regista in Italian means ‘director.’ It actually means the one who directs, who dictates the offensive play of the team. The Regista role is one very well known to everyone because of Andrea Pirlo’s magnificent performances in that same role for Juventus, sitting deep in his own half and dictating the tempo of the game, while also making breathtaking long passes no other player would see. It is a stretch to say that Maxime D’Arpino possesses the same level of quality as Pirlo did, but the Frenchman surely as a similar style of play.

In order to have a better profile of the abilities and style of play of Maxime D’Arpino, we took a look at the data. Calculating percentile ranks for his passing and defensive stats allowed for a comparison with midfielders and defensive midfielders from his league. Taking the comparison a step further, we also calculated his percentile ranks on the same metrics but in comparison to all midfielders in the top 5 European leagues. While this is not a completely realistic comparison, due to the difference in quality between Ligue 2 and the top 5 European leagues, it allows us to have a picture of what could potentially be D’Arpino’s ranks if he played in one of those leagues. The stats would probably be lower for him, but there is no way to know for sure, so the comparison should always be seen having that difference in mind.