Gianluca Mancini

Gianluca Mancini
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Gianluca Mancini



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Current Club: AS Roma

Previous Clubs: Atalanta, Perugia, Fiorentina

Loan Clubs: AS Roma, Perugia, Perugia





International: Italy 4 caps.

Trophies Won: N/A





An Italian international central defender who mostly plays to the right-side of Roma's back three and is extremely comfortable on the ball, like so many modern defenders. Mancini has good technique, his control is normally instant and he can pass the ball around well, though he is unlikely to play a 60 yard pinpoint crossfield pass. It tends to be shorter passing to the players around him.



When he gets going, he has good pace, but he is a bit like a train, it takes him a while to get up to speed and so he can be done for acceleration by a nippy forward. Mancini does have a good leap on him and is strong in the air, aided by being 6 foot 3 inches tall. He is a threat on attacking set-pieces as well as good at defending them.



There are a number of things about his game that worries me, in part down to the way Roma use their centre-backs. They like the wider ones to push very high, almost suicidally high and he does have a liking for the run out from the back, sometimes popping up in the box in open play after bringing the ball from the back.



His positioning suffers as a consequence, as well as being caught sometimes in behind as he pushes up, Mancini can compound that by being drawn out from the back very easily. If an opposing forward picks up the ball and then drops off deep into their own half, he will almost always follow them, leaving a huge gap where he should be.



Just to make that problem worse, he does have a tendency to make rash challenges, which lead to needless free kicks or him selling himself and unable to get back to help defend. Mancini's other big problem is that he does drift too far towards the centre for a player in a back three system. He will position himself like he is right-side of a central pair in a back four, meaning he is far too close to the central man in the back three.



There were times in the games I watched where he and Chris Smalling (who was playing the central position) were tripping over themselves trying to mark the same man centrally, while a number of players were left completely unguarded behind them. A lot of the issues, being drawn out, pushing too high in particular, are almost certainly an instruction from the coach, Paulo Fonseca, so I would think they could easily be ironed out if he were to move on or play a different style.



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Requested by - phil_LFC