Why Boga can be a top winger in Europe in the next few years

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the graphs in use in this thread are from @ExpectedChelsea , and @thirtyfeet be sure to follow him to get more, stats are gotten from @fbref , http://understat.com  and http://Whoscored.com .

Boga has been a hot property in the Serie A this season(19/20) and is wanted by a number of clubs, including his former club Chelsea. Today I will analyze his game and show why he can be a top winger in Europe.

in this thread, I will be talking about

- Boga's natural build-up
-Boga's qualities and attributes, strengths also using some videos and stats- Boga compared to U-24 in Europe(graphs, stats)
- Boga's weaknesses and what he needs to do to be a top winger in Europe.

Alright lets start,

Jeremie Boga is a 23-year-old Ivorian winger that plays for Sassuolo, he is a graduate of the Chelsea academy, who predominantly plays on the left-wing, but can play on the right and in the central attacking midfield position.

Boga's body make up
height= 172cm
Weight= 68kg

why are we doing this?
to know how he is able to do what he does, his strengths, and sometimes even weaknesses could be traced from here.

So Boga becasue of his height, has a low centre of gravity and also contributes to his natural balance which easily enables him to turn opponents and accelerate away. Boga also posseses big calves that gives him lower body strength to withstand opposition challenges

(just like his mentor Eden Hazard)

He also has decent upper body strength that allows him to hold the ball effectively.

and all these weve just seen all contribute to his biggest strength, Dribbling. we will talk about that more in the next section.

Boga's qualities and attributes:

We obviously start with his biggest strength, dribbling.
Boga is a worldclass dribbler, a big call to make, but i will show you evidence, Boga is outstanding with the ball at his feet,

he is a specialist at leaving defenders for dead and using his pace and great balance to get past opposition players in numbers. He usually utilizes the common but effective drop of the shoulder technique,

he also uses the standstill and turn or stand still and accelerate away dribbling styles, very common to Eden Hazard. When he is stopped he can win fouls, he wins 1.7 fouls per game in the Serie A this season.

He is one of the best dribblers in the Serie A. Probably the best and one of the most effective He has a dribble success rate of 64%(4.4 dribbles per game). completing about 106 dribbles the highest in the league

going into more of his age group,

Boga leads the way in successful dribbles for all U-24 attacking midfielders and wingers as shown by the graph below

Not only does he smoke U-24 Attackers in successful dribbles, but he is also the most effective U-24 dribbler in Europe, his dribbles also lead to more shots than the rest, which shows how he is dribbling with end product.

His touches in the box and touches in the final third also high in this image showing how dangerous a player he is in the final third of the pitch and where he is affecting the pitch

while Boga is a top dribbler he is also a good finisher. Although he usually has one particular type of finish, he usually cuts inside and releases a shot in the far corner. he is still pretty effective with it. we can see an example in this video

He has a shot accuracy of 50%, 4.1 NpxG and is overperforming his NpxG by 3.9 from 2.17 shots per game in the Serie A, which shows how well he finishes to a good extent. He has a calmness in front of goal, evident in the goal he scored against Juve

Another of his strength is passing, but it also shows his weakness also, I will differentiate that later.

Boga is a good short passer of the ball, he is good at keeping the ball with passes, we will also talk about his ability to keep the ball with both passes and dribbles too.

Boga uses short passes a lot to link-up play with his teammates, 1-2 touch play to give the ball back to him in space he has a pass% of 86%, passes in the opposition half% of 82%(17.2 passes) which is quite impressive.

I say short passing because he hardly makes long passes, which he can do more of, he only attempts 0.1(100%), but Franco de Zerbi encourages short passing link up btw his wingers, midfielders, and their corresponding fullback. so it isn't much against him.

We now get to his ability to keep hold of the ball. Boga's body strength, calf muscles, dribbling, and short passing ability allows him to keep hold of the ball really well. He loses possession only 11.2 times a game,

which as a disadvantage shows he does create much but also shows how well he can keep the ball, we have seen his passing accuracy and he also wins more than his fair share of duels, 6.5 ground duels won(57% rate).

The final strength of Boga's to highlight is his movement.

This strength was recently developed under De Zerbi, which shows he is improving his game, he either uses his movement in his link-up play and uses his runs to open up space for a quick through ball

to him in space, or uses it to ghost in behind defenders with his runs for a through ball or cross, we can see those in the video's below, the first can be seen for his goal against Juve this season(in the prev part of the thread) while another can be seen here

If he can continue to improve on this, it would only make him more dangerous and he will get more goals, via tap ins and 1 v 1's against the keeper.

Now that we have seen his strengths

We quickly analyze his weaknesses

Remember what i said about his passing being a strength and a weakness?, he can pass but his weakness is the timing and risky nature of the pass he fails to do which is generally chance creation.

when Boga dribbles he tends to overdribble sometimes and miss a quick through ball opportunity for his teammate or a quick pass to take the pressure off himself to free his teammates when attracting multiple bodies. We can see pictures of this below.

those are all examples that he could have passed earlier when he was meant to and he could have created a big scouring opportunity for his team.

He isn't completely aware of where his teammates are, he dribbles with his mindset and heads down sometimes making it hard to spot the pass, he definitely has the ability to make those passes which aren't so hard once his dribbling puts him in great positions.

He is like the more selfish version of Hazard. He makes a meager 1.1 key passes and only 3 big chances created this season highlighting this issue. He can learn how to use his teammates more in space and pick out passes to teammates in better positions to score.

Some claim Boga doesn't do that much due to his role in the Sassuolo team and he okayed the CAM position in the academy, I didn't watch Boga much in his Chelsea academy days, but recent evidence shows what he can do more to improve on his chance creation which is the only aspect

of the game that could stop him from being a top winger in my opinion. we see this graph below showing his percentiles ranked among the U-24 wingers in Europe. We see he ranks really low in Shots created by Open play passing and passing into the penalty area

He can also improve in his pressures in the final third, seeing he ranks in the 40th percentile among U-24 attackers. The team and system he ends up next season should depend on how much that improves.

Another thing that might not get mentioned a lot about Boga is his mentality and self-confidence in games against top oppositions, especially this season, He put Buffon on the floor, putting an audacious chip in the net, scored a solo goal against inter Milan, scored Fiorentina,

Torino, Roma and put other big performances too. this shows how he doesn't get fazed by the big occasion. It will help him at a bigger club.

Boga is already a dribbling master and a good finisher, once he improves his creation game and his movement as he has started he will be a top winger in Europe he possesses the talent and will to improve and self-confidence in his ability to go as far as he wants.

End of thread,

likes and RT's and thoughts highly appreciated, Thank you.

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