Manchester United Women have had a quiet but definite impact on the WSL, following their promotion to the top flight back in 2019. Being one of the four best teams in the league, along with Arsenal Women, Chelsea Women and Manchester City Women, they attract some big names to the club. Two players who have joined the team are Tobin Heath and Alessia Russo. Heath is an experienced striker and World Cup winner with the United States, whereas Russo is a promising English 21-year-old who has spent the last years in the US college game, and can play as a midfielder or a striker.
This tactical analysis will look at both players’ individual games, as well as how they can fit into Manchester United’s tactics this season. The analysis will also look at Heath’s statistics compared to Manchester United’s (there are no statistics available for Russo), to look in even more detail what she can bring to the team.
Alessia Russo
The scout report will start by looking at what Alessia Russo can add to Manchester United Women’s attack. Given that she has been in the college game, there isn’t much footage of her playing, but we will look at her performance in England’s game against Spain in the SheBelieves Cup last year. From this, we can make some interesting observations about her general play.
Firstly, Russo is a player with plenty of pace, and this means that she can move from one half of the pitch to the other relatively quickly. We can see this in the image above, with England in possession of the ball on the nearside of the pitch, and Russo running to offer the passing option in the space, as the red arrow shows. Therefore, this is useful for her team, because it means that the attack is spread out across the pitch, covering more ground. This in turn means that the defenders have to stretch across the pitch too, and can’t surround the ball, leaving the player in possession with a little more space and time on the ball than they might have ordinarily had.
The other thing that Russo offers to her team is that she can close players down quickly, which she does here. The ball has become stuck, with England defending with two lines in front of their goal, and Russo runs forward to force her Spanish opponent to make a decision quickly. Therefore, we can see how this is something that Manchester United will value this season, with Russo able to run forwards and happy to get tight to opponents, meaning that teams will have to be quicker on the ball against Manchester United this season.
Spain ev
