The quality Rimantė Jonušaitė will bring to Milan Women’s attacking game – tactical analysis

Following the departure of Natasha Dowie at the end of last season, Milan Women found themselves relying solely on Valentina Giacinti as a striker while alternating between her and the other new signing, Nina Stapelfeldt. Thats why it was fundamental to sign a new striker, create more internal challenges between the players, and most of all, have plenty of options to choose from according to matches. Another reason for making this transfer is related to the whole teams attacking performances. Milans attacking efficiency deteriorated when comparing it to the two previous seasons. The team failed in qualifying to the UEFA Women’s Champions League group stage mainly because they were not able to score goals. The same applies for the team’s performances in Serie A Women but with a lesser impact since Milan were able to win most of their matches. Yet, they did not convince in terms of finishing and playmaking.

The arrival Rimantė Jonušaitė is surely not going to solve all the team’s issues but it is going to be an important step towards improving the team’s attacking performances in the near future. Moreover, playing and training with a player like Giacinti will surely help Jonušaitė get familiar with Serie A, learn a lot of things about Italian football and most of all, develop and improve as a striker.

This tactical analysis will therefore help in presenting Jonušaitė, her characteristics, strengths, weaknesses and aspects to work on in terms of tactics. The analysis will also include glimpses of what she can do in front of the goal in order to identify her finishing abilities as well as her reactions in difficult situations. This will then show if Jonušaitė is ready to play immediately and participate actively in big matches against teams like Juventus, Roma, Inter and Sassuolo or she will need more time to adapt to the Italian playing style.

Position and roles

Jonušaitė is an 18-year-old natural striker who plays mainly in that position. She is a Lithuanian international player who used to play for Gintra Universitetas before joining the Rossoneri. What distinguishes her from the other strikers is her physical abilities and most of all, her ability to use both feet with almost the same efficiency. This helps strikers a lot especially when receiving the ball in difficult situations. Strikers usually receive the ball under heavy marking, and being able to exchange between using the right foot and the left one depending on the situation is surely an advantage. It creates confusion among markers and helps the striker in getting some much-needed space.

As you can see in this picture, Jonušaitė is not a static striker. She moves a lot when the team is in possession and especially when out of possession. This started to become fundamental in today’s football as strikers contribute a lot in the defensive phase and exchange roles with midfielders in the attacking phase. It is true that Jonušaitė will need some time to show her abilities at Milan, yet what she did for Gintra and at the Lithuanian national team is already encouraging. However, Maurizio Ganz will need to work with her individually during this initial period in order to improve her passing and finishing abilities even further to make them suit the level of Serie A, knowing the gap between the Lithuanian and the Italian leagues.

Attacking abilities

Jonušaitė scored six goals in eleven matches in 2021 and that’s an impressive number for an 18-year-old player. Nevertheless, she will need to make an extra effort to keep or improve these statistics in Italy given that teams are a bit more aggressive in duels in Serie A, that’s why we suggested individual training to familiarise the player with this different playing style. Also, playing with Milan defenders will help a lot in this regard as they are also strong in duels. In front of the goal, Jonušaitė is usually focused and knows where to strike the ball even when she doesn’t have plenty of time or when she is disturbed by defenders or goalkeepers. This was noticed on several occasions but the one that shows it clearly is the following.