Another Soucek: Is Rijeka’s Bosnian powerhouse ready for a bigger stage?

Stjepan Lončar is Bosnian central midfielder who plays for HNK Rijeka. This scout report will contain tactical analysis on Lončar attributes and his playing style. Lončar has collected eight caps for Bosnian national team. 

Lončar performed well in this years group stage of Europa League in a tough group playing against Serie A side Napoli, La Liga sensation Real Sociedad and AZ Alkmaar. He started all six matches and was subbed off only once. Lončar managed to score once against Real Sociedad and assisted once in each game against AZ Alkmaar. His performances haven’t gone unnoticed especially in Spain with rumours that Rijeka received few enquiries about energetic box to box midfielder. Further in the analysis, we will try to make a detailed look at his qualities and why he caught the eye of clubs in bigger leagues. 

Player overview

Stjepan Lončar is 24-year-old who plays as a central midfielder. Transfermarkt values him at 2.5 million euros. Lončar is listed 187 cm and he is predominantly left-footed. Rijeka coach Rožman mostly uses different variances of 3-5-2 and Lončar fits mostly as left central midfielder in that formation. Lončar is crucial for Rijeka tactics because of his impressive physical qualities which allow him to work a lot for his team, but also always be ready to lead counter-attack with his vertical runs.

In the image above we can see how Lončar looks compared to the other midfielders in 1.HNL who played at least 270 minutes. We can see on his heatmap how he occupies a lot of the left half-space and that he often drifts wide. Lončar is the best in progressive runs and he is making a lot of penetrative runs through the middle especially in transition. He is also best in deep completions which just shows his creative side in the final third. That leads to a lot of shot assists and xA where he is one of the better midfielders in the league. His height allows him to win 52% of aerial duels and he is good in defensive duels winning 58.44% of those.  After a quick overview of his profile and looking at his qualities from a data perspective, in the next sections we will make a detailed analysis of his playing style and his strengths.

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