NWSL side the Houston Dash have just acquired the services of twenty-year-old Brazilian international Tarciane for a reported fee of €470,000, a record fee for any Brazilian player.
Since making her senior debut for Fluminese at the age of 16, she has established herself as a regular first-team player before being transferred to Corinthians in 2021.
Since being transferred, Tarciane has gone from strength to strength, having helped her side to three consecutive Brasiliero Womens titles and two Copa Libertadores championships. This success has also resulted in her earning a call-up to the Brazilian national team in 2022, and she has since gone on to establish herself as a regular starter within the side.
Having just completed her record-breaking move to Houston, she will be looking to continue to challenge herself in a new environment. Houston struggled at the start of the 2024 NWSL season, recording only one win from their opening five games.
This tactical analysis will outline the key tactics and traits that make Tarciane’s transfer to Houston so interesting. This scout report will provide an analysis of her positional role, defensive attributes, potential improvements and how she will fit into the Houston Dash side.
Position and Role
First of all, let’s look at the roles that Tarciane has played in her career to date to garner a better understanding of who she is as a player. Now, her typical position for both Corinthians and the Brazilian national team has been right centre-back.
At Corinthians, this has generally been as part of a back four in either a 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 formation, with iterations of these two formations accounting for 85% of their game time over the past year. However, she has played on the right side of a back three for Brazil, with Brazil having utilised a 3-4-3 formation of late.
Tarciane’s greatest strengths are her ability to defend with excellent physical attributes in terms of speed, strength, and length, with her listed at 6’0 tall. As a result, she is an aggressive defender who can mark opponents and win the ball from them. She is also an adept cover defender with excellent recovery speed. However, we will go into these attributes in more depth later on.
Then, let’s have a look at the opposite side of the ball when she has it at her feet. This has certainly not been her strength, with her sparingly being asked to be involved with ball progression. The primary ball progressor roles fell to Mariza at Corinthians, Rafaelle, or Antonia for the Brazilian national team.
However, despite this, she has demonstrated some ability in this area, completing at the fifth highest rate amongst all other central defenders in the Brasileiro Serie A at 88.69%. This is also up from 82.22% in 2023, which shows a promising upward trend. On top of this, she has demonstrated some intention to play forward, with 35% of her average of 41.09 passes being attempted forward.
This heatmap goes to show that her primary role within the Corinthians side is to remain deep as the right centre-back as opposed to making regular forays forwards.
Defensive understanding and positioning
The first aspect of Tarciane that we are going to look at in more detail is her ability to be aggressive and step into the midfield to make strong physical tackles to divert possession elsewhere.
