Amine Gouiri has left Olympique Lyon and has joined one of Les Gones’ Ligue 1 rivals, Nice, for the 2020/21 campaign. The France U20 international has joined Les Aiglons for almost £1m more than the club have recently received from RC Lens for the now-ex-Nice attacker, Ignatius Ganago.
Despite impressing in front of goal in the UEFA Youth League this term, scoring four in three for Lyon, and delivering some impressive goalscoring performances at international youth level, scoring five goals in six appearances for the France U20s, Gouiri didn’t get many first-team minutes at Lyon, making just five appearances in all competitions for the club during the 2019/20 campaign.
Now that he has joined Nice, the 20-year-old attacker will hope to advance in his career by establishing himself as a senior player in Ligue 1. In this tactical analysis piece in the form of a scout report, we will look at some of the key elements to Gouiri’s game. We will identify some of the positives of his game that may have played a significant role in Nice signing the player, while we will also examine some of the potential areas of improvement within Gouiri’s game in this scout report.
We will also examine Nice in this tactical analysis piece and we will look at their tactics from the 2019/20 season and try to determine how and where Gouiri may find a place with Les Aiglons’ plans for the 2020/21 campaign, as last season’s fifth-placed side will hope to challenge for a UEFA Champions League place next term.
Where could Gouiri fit in at Nice?
Gouiri has primarily played as a centre forward thus far during his young career, however, he also has some experience with playing on the wings and in the ‘number 10’ position.
Following Ganago’s departure, Gouiri will now be one of three natural centre forwards within Nice’s squad, the other two being his fellow ex-Lyon youth player Myziane Maolida and Kasper Dolberg. It should also be noted, however, that some other Nice players such as Alexis Claude-Maurice, do have some experience of playing in a centre forward position.
Dolberg was Nice’s main centre forward during the 2019/20 season, however, both Maolida and now-ex-Nice forward Ganago accumulated plenty of game time alongside the Danish attacker. Both Maolida and Ganago were frequently utilised on the wings last season.
The image above provides us with Gouiri’s heatmap for the 2019/20 season. While he is primarily a centre forward, we can see by this heatmap that the 20-year-old Nice attacker covers quite a lot of ground inside the attacking third of the pitch, spending quite a lot of time on the left-wing and spending the majority of his time in the left half-space.
While he usually lined his side up in shapes that utilised just one centre forward last season, Nice manager Patrick Vieira liked to use players who are comfortable with playing in a central attacking role, such as Ganago and Maolida, on the wings and these players would often enjoy opportunities to cut inside and attack central areas of the pitch last season, as we will discuss later on in this tactical analysis piece.
