Yacine Adli Scouting Report At Bordeaux 2021/22: Incoming Milan Maestro’s Maturation At Bordeaux

Yacine Adli (186cm/6’1”, 78kg/172lbs) joined Serie A giants AC Milan last summer for a reported €8m and a season-long loan back to the club he’d been signed from for 2021/22 — Ligue 1’s Girondins de Bordeaux.

The 21-year-old playmaker joined Bordeaux from PSG 31 months before this Milan transfer, in January 2019, for an alleged €5.5m fee, having rejected a move to EPL side Arsenal a year and a half beforehand at a time when the Gunners were under the tutelage of Unai Emery who’d previously given Adli his Ligue 1 debut for Les Parisiens.

Adli has steadily grown throughout his time at Matmut Atlantique.

This season, he’s been a key figure in the southwestern club’s relegation battle, with much of the team’s play moving through him.

This growth in the team was not by accident.

In late-2021, the young Frenchman revealed in an interview: “When a club like Milan signs you, you want to go there right away but this year will serve me to prepare myself in a better way.

I also want to help Bordeaux have a good season.

The coach waits for me to be more decisive.”

This increased decisiveness has been evident in Adli’s play this season.

The 21-year-old has improved his bravery on the ball and displayed more leadership qualities on the pitch.

He’s currently Bordeaux’s chief creator, with only seven players making more Ligue 1 assists than Adli (six) this term.

The creator ranks second among Ligue 1 midfielders for assists in 2021/22, only trailing Dimitri Payet.

While his importance has increased on the pitch, this has seemingly also been the case off the pitch, with Adli picking up the captain’s armband in recent weeks after ex-captain Laurent Koscielny was let go last month.

All in all, it appears as though Milan has got a maturing leader on their hands set to join I Rossoneri later this year, but what exactly can Milan fans expect from their soon-to-be new midfielder?

This tactical analysis and scout report aims to provide an in-depth analysis of Adli’s role within Bordeaux’s strategy and tactics this season and highlight what he has to offer his new club.

Adli is a highly versatile player with a diverse skill set that could make him well-suited to several different positions or tactical roles upon arrival in Italy. His work rate and leadership qualities also make him an exciting prospect as he continues his development.

I hope that this scout report provides Ligue 1 fans, Serie A fans and any other readers with a clearer picture of what Adli brings to the table and what makes him tick as the hub of struggling Bordeaux’s creativity this season, driving their ongoing relegation battle.

Creativity in advanced areas

Adli’s passing and off-the-ball movement to receive passes are, for me, the most interesting aspects of his game, so much so that I’ve decided to split this aspect of his game into two separate sections in this tactical analysis piece — ‘creativity in advanced areas’ and ‘creativity in deeper areas’.

Firstly, I’ll take a look at Adli’s propensity for creating in more advanced areas.

As already mentioned, the PSG academy product has been his side’s main source of creativity this season.

The extent to which Adli has been vital to his team’s chance creation this season is evident in the fact that, per Understat, he’s got by far the highest xGChain (9.06) of any Bordeaux player.

This statistic assigns an xG value to a player for every possession they’re involved in and Adli’s is almost twice as high as any other Bordeaux player.

This gives us an indication of his impact on possession and his central role in Bordeaux’s system.

As previously mentioned — a lot of Les Girondins’ play flows through Adli, resulting in this high xGChain.

Additionally, though, this does also give us a positive indication that when Adli is involved in his team’s play, the possession tends to be a more dangerous one, which I’d attribute to the player’s impressive levels of creativity.

While this section of analysis intends to focus on Adli’s creativity in advanced areas, it’s really common to see him picking up the ball in deeper areas, as was the case in figure 1 here.

In Bordeaux’s system, which relies heavily on him and his creativity, the playmaker, who typically plays as either one of the ‘number 8s’, a ‘number 10’ or a left-winger, will frequently drop deep to collect the ball from the centre-backs or even to drop between the centre-backs and collect from the goalkeeper.

From there, whil