Thread: Amad Diallo Traore

First of all I’m going to say that I’m not the best when it comes to threads and I’m going to hopefully be watching Traore a lot more closely. However (I don’t know if he’ll be covering Traore) check out @utdarena for the most in depth and informative threads

Nevertheless this thread will cover:

1. Amad Traore’s style of play
2. His strengths
3. His weaknesses
4. How he would fit in stylistically at United and how we could get the best out of him and the team

Firstly, let’s address the elephant in the room. This is all an analysis from him playing at academy level and obviously the biggest question is how will he adapt to the professional level, however from the fact that he’s scored in the 25 minutes he’s played is promising to note

1. Style of play:

Amad Traore is a modern day inverted winger with his preference to cut inside and play through passes into the striker or play 1-2s in the final third before unleashing a shot or attempting a through pass to create a high value goalscoring opportunity

However he is also fairly comfortable at running down the byline to create a cut back or cross to the far post and although he is left footed he isn’t afraid to shoot or create with his right foot which makes him quite unpredictable to defend as shown here:

: @KaiiZoFilms

2. His strengths:

Amad Traore has fantastic close ball control and is very confident at beating his opponent with either a body feint or a fancy skill, in particular the la croqueta which results in spaces opening up for either an overlapping full back or closet midfielder

Like you would expect with most wingers he has great balance which makes it difficult to dispossess him and his quick bursts and feints allow him to quickly gain a yard or two on his opponent which as simple as it can be, massively helps in getting a team up the pitch

He’s also deceptively quick and uses his pace very intelligently, mainly when he executes a body feint he then has the ability to lose his man due to his speed (although he isn’t lightning quick) which for United will help improve our counter attacking transitions quite a bit

However he excels in the final third as explained in his style of play segment and his attacking skillset will make him very useful as he has the ability to play as an inside forward like we see with Greenwood as well as be able to hug the touch line like Daniel James on that RW

Yes as we know this is all from academy level but we also need to understand that Atalanta have one of if not the best academy in Italy and his footballing education and potential is a huge factor into his price tag as shown by his stats when at RW

Thanks to @MUFC_Foz for this

And this is essentially a snippet of all these strengths highlighted although I’m sure I’ve missed out on many more

Once again : @KaiiZoFilms

Make sure to give a follow

3. Weaknesses

Amad Traore tends to over elaborate sometimes and whilst that can be a positive showing his confidence on the ball it can lead to frustration when he e.g tries a defence splitting pass when he should just keep it simple

As well as that in the final third he takes too many touches which slow down the momentum of an attack which will need to be quickly ironed out of his game, especially if he wants to be a regular starter for United

And again I’ll mention it once more as a sort of question mark because rightfully so it does need to be factored this is all at development level and it will be quite a step up when he plays in the premier league especially where Traore won’t have as much time on the ball

4. How he’ll fit in to United

Finally let’s look at how he’ll be used tactically at United:

When he joins in January he will for a while start on the bench and be eased in but for the sake of it if he was to start straightaway I would expect to see him play as a RW...

Then in possession play like an inside forward / inverted winger like Mason Greenwood with Wan-Bissaka providing the width as shown here:

However for me (and this is just my personal opinion) I think he’d get the best out of the team and could be used like how Mahrez is used by Pep Guardiola playing as a RW who stays wide to get in 1v1 situations which for Traore would still make use of his qualities as shown here:

I also put Van De Beek in here not because I dislike Fernandes or anything it’s that I believe we could very much see a partnership created between Traore and Donny Van De Beek and in this role I think Van De Beek would be far more effective than Bruno (again my opinion)

Final thoughts:

Yes for a lot of United fans (including myself) given the incessant and endless links to Sancho and later on with Ousmane Dembele to bring in what for many is an unknown entity in Traore feels like a kick in the teeth...

However I really do believe that United wouldn’t pay a fee pushing €40 million if they:

1. Didn’t believe in his quality and potential
2. See him as a quality fit and Traore is very much one of the brightest prospects in Serie A

So I believe we have an unreal player to join us in January who will provide quality on the RW which we’ve lacked for so long. So when Traore joins be very very excited for what he’ll bring to Manchester United

Thanks for reading likes and RT’s appreciated