FM21: The Ascendancy of Amine
Amine Gouiri was once labelled one of Olympique Lyon’s and French footballs top prospects, the Frenchman impressing in front of goal in the UEFA Youth League, scoring four in three for Lyon, and also delivering some impressive goalscoring performances at international youth level, scoring five goals in six appearances for the France U20s.
Despite this Gouiri didn’t secure many first-team minutes at Lyon, making just five appearances in all competitions for the club during the 2019/20 campaign for Lyon, a club where competition is fierce from a hotbed of Academy talents such as Maxence Caqueret, Houssem Aouar and Rayan Cherki
Gouiri made the choice of swapping Lyon for OGC Nice in a €7 million deal, the attacking starlet opting to chose a well-trodden path which has led to great success for some of those (Loïc Rémy, Claude Puel, Alassane Pléa) who have gone before him.
The image above provides us with Gouiri’s heatmap for the 2020/21 season. While he is primarily a centre forward, we can see by this heatmap that the 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.
Gouiri is comfortable with playing in a central attacking role, he often enjoys opportunities to cut inside and attack central areas of the pitch whilst operating on the wing, it is this position IF (S) that he has operated in predominantly in my save on Football Manager.
NISSA — 2020/21
As you can see from the above data, Gouiri featured heavily for OGC Nice whether that be from the bench or securing a starting position. He mainly was used on the left-wing, however, it quickly became apparent that the youngster lacked the ability to keep the ball and often was the main source for our attacks breaking down.
The above was a regular feature in Gouiri’s game which presented Myziane Maolida with the opportunity to play from the left, a chance which he grasped, making Maolida the first name on the teamsheet for the wide role.
This left Gouiri mainly coming on from the bench to either provide Kasper Dolberg with some much-earned rest or to replace Maolida as and when he wasn’t performing, not exactly the underpinning narrative you would expect from one of Ligue 1’s top young talents.
NISSA — 2021/22
The following season Gouiri moved down the pecking order after the club secured the signing of Nicolas De La Cruz from River Plate and Matias Arezo from River Plate Montevideo. With game time taking a major hit, Magnus was considering shipping the youngster out on loan to Huesca, Les Aiglons affiliate side who play their trade in LaLiga 2.
Fortunately for both parties Shandong Luneng submitted an offer of £18.5m for the Uruguayan in the January window which closed the door on a pathway away from Nice for Gouiri. This resulted in an increase in minutes played and the Frenchman reaching double figures in terms of goals scored and also securing an increase in his passes completion from 81% to 85% in the league.
Were these early signs of what was to come from Gouiri? Could the youngster reach his potential and get a call up to Les Bleus?
NISSA — 2022/23
The ascendancy of Amine, this season the form of the Frenchman has taken a dramatic rise with Gouiri’s form exploding. He has already outscored his combined goals for the two previous seasons and looks nailed on to beat his assists and Player of the Match outputs as well.
What could have impacted the ascendancy of Amine?
I believe that the following two factors have had a significant impact on the improvements which have taken Gouiri’s game to the next level.
- The signing of Dominik Szoboszlai.
- Changing the passing directness when in possession.
Szoboszlai has been a catalyst and key contributor to the ascendancy of Gouiri, having a MEZ (S) in the midfield pairing rather than a CM (S) results in an additional body at times entering the final third, particularly the half-space. This overload creates a problem for the defence and if the opt to engage with Szoboszlai then their is space to attack which Gouiri has been taken advantage of.
The above image is a perfect example of how the changing both the positional role of our left-sided CM from CM (S) to a MEZ (S) and adjusting the passing directness from shorter passing to standard has helped to improve the effectiveness of our attack. I have broken the goal down in further detail below.
Thuram starts of the attack from his position at the base of the top-down midfield, operating as a DLP (D) he passes the ball out to Pedro Brazao on the right-wing.
Note that the Strasbourg side is set up in a clear 4–1–3–2 formation, their defensive line span the width of their box and their DM is offering additional protection of zone 14.
At his point, Strasbourg look as if they are organised in defence and have sufficient men behind the ball to nullify the threat of OGC Nice.
As play advances, Thuram plays a ball out wide to Brazao who is pressed by tow Strasbourg players, one of which is their left-back who advances from his position from the defensive line.
This movement forces the DM to drop into the defensive unit and removes the additional screen in front of the defensive unit.
It could be argued that the Strasbourg side are set up to force players wide as the whole team move their block towards Pedro, looking to restrict the space for him to operate in.
This movement leaves an overload on the far side of the pitch with both Szoboszlai (MEZ) positioned on the cusp of the half-space and Gouiri free in the wide channel.
Thanks to switching the passing to standard, Brazao plays the ball to the feet of Szobosslai, a player who with high attributes in both vision (14) and decisions (14). The Strasbourg right-back looks to close down the Hungarian leaving his centre-backs in no man's land.
Due to the defensive line not stepping up the pass is made even easier, Gouiri (IF) has acres of space to be played in on goal and is able to score an audacious strike from the edge of the box.
Analysing Amine
Les Aiglons
It would be rude of me not to carry out a mid-season review without including a squad profile. However, I have added a little twist to this edition by adding in goal contributions (goals + assists), the deeper the circle the more contributions.
Firstly, drilling down into the minutes played it is clear that there are five names who are first on my teamsheet (Klaesson, Gouirim Blas, Nsoki and Szoboszlai).
The core of the squad are either in their peak (24–29 years old) or are moving into that category which means that OGC Nice should be entering into a period in which they are at their most competitive, hopefully, this added experience will see the side maintain their form across the full season instead of having the routine drop in form.
Above is a list of the top seven contributors within the squad, Captian Rony Lopes leading the way with 21 contributions which are made up of 12 goals and nine assists.
Our man and focus of this piece, Amine has 20 contributions to his name, 19 of which are goals. This exceptional run of form has the youngster, who has recently turned 23 years old already scoring more across the first half of this campaign than he has over the previous two seasons combined.
Big Five Comparison
Considering the fact that Amine is sitting second in the goalscoring chart for Ligue 1, two behind PSG’s latest edition Erling Haaland, I opted to conduct an analysis into the top scorers across Europes big five leagues (Premier League, Primera Division, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1).
My first point of the analysis compares individuals who play in advanced positions (LW, RW, AM, ST) on the field, with a particular focus on Shots-per 90 and Goals.
The visual can be broken down to four groups, Cyborgs on the top right (volume shooters, volume scorers), Trigger Happy on the bottom right (volume shooters, lacking goals), Snipers on the top left (fewer shots, more goals) and Triggerless on the bottom left (hardly shoot, hardly score).
As you can see Gouiri sits above average in terms of shots per game in relation to the sample and also sits in the higher percentile in terms of goals scored.
Now we have established that Gouiri falls into the Cyborg category, those individuals who we question at times as to whether they are human or not due to their ability to finish, I have decided to compare the goals vs expected goals with the same sample.
Looking at the above visual, you will see that players such as Haaland is scoring the number of goals which he is expected to, he is getting in excellent positions and also finishing them.
Gouiri on the other hand has a significantly lower xG value and is over performing his xG to date.
He isn’t the only player in this situation, the above image highlights those outperforming their xG score. Gouiri leads the way scoring his 18 goals from an xG value of 8.75. It is clear the proportion by which Gouiri is exceeding expectations far surpasses any other player in Europe at this point within the save.
One of the reasons that Expected Goals is such a useful metric is because it’s more predictive of how many goals a player is likely to score in the future than the number of goals they’ve actually scored.
Realistically, that tells us Gouiri’s finishing should move more in line with his underlying xG in future.
This is due to the xG figure itself being a measure of how good a player is at getting into good shooting positions, but not necessarily about the quality of finishing itself.
On the flip side, above is a list of players across the continent who are considerably underscoring their xG value, with Lucas Ocampos of Sevilla being the pick of the bunch.
The 28-year-old Argentinian has scored 4 goals from an expected goals value of 13.3, a value not to be too proud of!
Ocampos and his peers in the sample are getting in positions and you will probably see their goals to xG value level out over time taking into consideration the rule of averages.
The Anatomy of Gouiri’s Goalscoring
As I am clearly sad and have nothing better to do with my free time, I opted to watch each and every one of Gouiri’s goals in order to capture the raw data which FM does not in order to create the below dashboard.
Amine has scored 60 percent of his goals this season away from home, contributing to the teams impressive away from the Allianz Riviera.
The majority of his goals (65%) have come from inside the box with impressively 30 percent of his return being scored within the six yard box, his attributes (Finishing 16, Technique 16, Off the ball 15 and Acceleration 15), help in this department all of which are desired for the role of a Poacher.
You can see from the body part pie chart that Gouiri is well rounded in terms of his finishing, his variation in his ability to score his goals makes him a real threat for the oppositions defence. Gouiri clearly favours his right foot with 55% of his goals coming from that boot, hence why cutting in from the left as an IF is really effective.
His 25% of headed goals goes against his attributes of 13 (Heading), 11 (Jumping Reach) and 12 (Bravery), which goes to show that a player does not always need to have outstanding attributes in order to be effective.
Finally, Blas and Szobozlai are the two individuals who have provided the most assists to Gouiri (3), there are no stand outs in terms of common assists which highlights that Gouiri is scoring from a range of situations and credits his movement off the ball.
Ligue 1
As expected, when looking at Gouiri’s individual player radar he is performing above average in relation to his goals and xG and his conversion rate is above other IF within the league. There is still room for development as the Frenchman’s creative side of the game is below average, it is also pleasing to see that his pass completion now is meeting the average in Ligue 1 for his position.
Gouiri has certainly helped to propel Les Aiglons to the top of Ligue 1 at the midway point of the 2022/23 season, the side from the Cote d’Azur have one of the most feared forward line in the league. If Gouiri’s ascendancy doesn’t drop off and he can become a consistent performer for his side, paired with the like of Blas, Lopes and either Dolberg or Silva, there could well be a shock in store for PSG over the coming seasons.
