“Bring me Sensi, even without legs.” A telling statement on Inter loanee Stefano Sensi’s footballing intelligence that his agent Giuseppe Riso recently claimed one manager in England had said when speaking about the 24-year-old Italian midfielder. On loan from fellow Serie A side Sassuolo, and after some excellent early performances for Inter, Sensi’s season has unfortunately been ravaged by injury. In what has been a stop-start campaign, Sensi played the first seven games, winning six and contributing with three goals and two assists. From then on he missed nine games with an abductor tear, returned for five, and was re-injured up until the season was stopped due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
In just over 1000 minutes for Inter this season (12 games), it seems Sensi may have done enough to convince the Nerazzurri to trigger their option to buy him at the end of the 2019/20 campaign. The midfielder’s intelligence, spatial awareness, passing distribution, and creativity have impressed Inter manager Antonio Conte who is said to be ‘crazy about him,’ and has resulted in him earning his first full international caps for Italy this season.
This scout report will use tactical analysis and statistics to examine why Stefano Sensi should be a transfer target that Inter considers a priority this summer analysing his strengths and areas for development with regard to his role at Inter Milan.
Role for Inter
Sensi has predominantly played as a left-sided central midfielder this season in Antonio Conte’s 3-5-2 formation. When building the attack from their defensive third, Inter often has defensive midfielder Marcelo Brozović drop deep to receive the ball. As this happens, Inter’s two centre midfielders will drift wide in an attempt to spread the opposition midfield and play penetrative passes directly into the front two of Romelu Lukaku and Lautaro Martínez. This provides some context to Sensi’s heatmap below as we can see he covers the majority of the left side of the pitch from box to box (red colour) and is often positioned out on the left flank also.
When Inter’s centre-backs and defensive midfielder Brozovic cannot play directly into their strikers, they look to play to the attacking wing-backs or the central midfielders in advanced positions. Often positioning himself in the left half-space can lead to opportunities to combine with the wing-back in 2 vs 1 situations down the left flank. Additionally, by vacating the central area, this affords opportunities for Sensi to play into Martinez or Lukaku’s feet. By receiving in the half-space or flank, opposing midfielders are drawn out of position and often not compact enough to prevent penetrative vertical passes. Under Conte’s tactics, as the ball arrives into the front two, this is a trigger for the advanced central midfielders such as Sensi to provide support and combine in the final third as we will discuss later on.
