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Liverpool move quickly to sign a target of opportunity as Federico Chiesa arrives from Juventus for a bargain £10M fee.
With the summer transfer window entering its final days, Liverpool have moved quickly to secure a transfer of opportunity with Juventus and Italy forward Federico Chiesa arriving in a deal worth £10M plus £2.5M in add-ons and the player set to sign a four-year deal with his new club.
It’s a fee that seems almost shockingly low for someone who was once rated as an £65M (€80M) winger, but Chiesa’s contract status with one year left and injury history plus the fact that he was not seen as key to the plans of Juventus head coach Thiago Motta meant he was available for a bargain fee. Today, we dig into what he will bring to the Reds.
Federico Chiesa
Forward | Juventus
DOB: October 25, 1997 (26) | Height 5’9” (175cm)
2023-24: 37 appearances (2,512 min) | 10g/3a
Strengths
After years of stockpiling players who can effectively play on the left wing, Liverpool finally have a forward whose name isn’t Mohamed Salah who can be equally effective on the right. It might not have been the position of greatest need for Arne Slot’s Reds, but it was one of the few weak points in one of the best squads in club football and the signing of Federico Chiesa addresses it in spades. The versatile forward is genuinely two-footed and equally at home on the left, and he could also be deployed in the ten role earmarked for Dominik Szoboszlai and Harvey Elliott or even as a false nine striker in a pinch.
While he might not arrive as the best option for any of those forward positions in a side as talented as Liverpool’s current squad, his flexibility makes him an exceptionally strong 1B option across the board while being the kind of player who would be a nailed-on starter for almost any other club in Europe’s top leagues. That flexibility could see easily Chiesa match the 2,500 minutes he played last season by starting regularly at different positions to give favoured first choice players rest as well as finding a place in the matchday squad ahead of existing options as the first attacker off the bench whenever he isn’t starting.
When on the pitch, his best qualities on the ball are his speed and his ability to progress play. Whether carrying the ball or via a high-volume, moderate-risk passing game that saw him create around five shots for himself and teammates per 90 minutes on average last season, Chiesa excels at getting the ball up the pitch, unlocking defences, and creating scoring opportunities. He was amongst Serie A’s leaders last year for both progressive passes and progressive carries and can rely on being a solidly above average dribbler in tight spaces when defences become set and are able to negate his blistering pace.
And in transition and on the counter, that pace can be truly devastating to opponents—based on his clocked top speed at this summer’s Euros, the only current Liverpool player faster than Chiesa is Dominik Szoboszlai. Give him space to move into and he will take it, and once he does there are few opponents who will be able to keep up with him. Slot’s Liverpool have shown they want to play a deep buildup game that attempts to bait the opposition press and create false transitions (counter situations created through possession rather than by forcing turnovers) before quickly going vertical into the space created as their opponents move up, and effectively exploiting those spaces might be the single strongest aspect of Chiesa’s game.
His pace isn’t kept in reserve just for attacking, either, with defensive work-rate one of the first things you notice about Chiesa’s game. He’s the sort of player who leaves it all on the pitch, often running himself to exhaustion by around the hour mark as a result of his efforts. He’s not only a willing defender, both from the front and when needed at the back, he’s also an effective—at least by forward standards—defender on the ground, albeit unlike some of Liverpool’s shorter forwards in recent years he isn’t especially strong in the air.
He likely won’t be called on to try to win many aerial duels at Liverpool, though, and his work-rate, his defensive tenacity, and his ability to win the ball on the press and transition into attack effectively at pace place him amongst the top forwards in those categories in Europe.
Weaknesses
Fitness is the elephant in the room when it comes to Chiesa, but there are promising signs it might be a somewhat overstated concern. A serious ACL injury and reconstructed knee saw the player miss almost the entirety 2021-22, and in the recovery season that was 2022-23 he suffered a string of secondary injuries. That’s not unusual for a player returning from a year on the sidelines, though, and 2023-24 saw Chiesa make 37 appearances while playing more than 2,500 minutes.
Those numbers are roughly in line with what Liverpool players Jarell Quansah, Ibrahima Konaté, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Dominik Szoboszlai played last season, which taken together with the two previous seasons would be concerning if the player was being signed to be a nailed-on starter. As a fourth or fifth forward at Liverpool, though, those numbers—and no especially lengthy or significant layoffs last season—would be more than acceptable even if Chiesa can’t take another step up on the fitness front another year removed from his ACL and subsequent injury issues.
As someone who will likely see minutes deputizing for Mohamed Salah on the right, it could be that rather than fitness and availability it will be the areas his game doesn’t measure up the levels of Liverpool’s Egyptian superstar that will inevitably stand out most to fans once they start to watch Chiesa week in and week out.
While he excels in a transition game, in sustained possession his game is noticeably weaker off the ball than on it, and he at times struggling to effectively identify and move into space to provide the kind of passing outlets that would help to open up a packed defence—and even on the ball, in possession he can be prone to over-dribbling and missing obvious passing options at times as a result. An average ability to find and utilize space extends to the areas Chiesa tends to pop up around the goal. If some forwards can be said to have a poacher’s instincts—that seemingly innate ability to always arrive at the right place at the right time for a simple tap-in off a cut-back, deflection, or rebound—it’s probably fair to say that Chiesa doesn’t.
His shot selection at times also lets him down, and all of that is reflected in his numbers: his 3.12 shots per 90 over the past year is in the 75th percentile while his xG is just 0.24 per 90, in the 11th percentile compared to forwards in the top five leagues. Those numbers, along with a very middle of the park 0.51 expected goal involvements per 90, were up last season compared to the two injury-his years before, but they’re also well in line with his pre-injury numbers and likely represent the ceiling for Chiesa’s contributions around the penalty area.
Summary
Managing expectations should perhaps be the name of the game when it comes to the signing of Federico Chiesa. The Italian international is a strong player, exceptional in the transition game and the sort of forward who can provide solid support for more incisive players around him. Pre-injury talk of Chiesa perhaps being an £65M (€80M) player was probably always on the high and hopeful side, though, reflecting an expectation at the time that he would continue to develop some of the weaker parts of his game.
It is highly unlikely, then, that post-injury and now into his prime years he will suddenly blossom into a worthy successor to Mohamed Salah. It’s equally true, though, that at £10M the fee Liverpool are paying is wildly below his talent level and what he will be able to bring to Arne Slot’s side if he can stay at least as fit as he was in 2023-24 for Juventus—and if he can stay fit, it’s likely he will fall somewhere in or around the Luis Diaz to Cody Gakpo continuum as far as what he brings to the side.
If he hits, then, that probably makes Chiesa a solid £40M (€50M) forward at fair market value, and having one of those who can effectively be deployed on the right wing—or anywhere else in attack—makes Liverpool a stronger and deeper side today then they were at the start of the week. Longer term, if he stays fit it will probably also mean that one of Liverpool’s forwards is going to struggle for minutes, but that’s likely a better potential headache to have than the opposite, and given the bargain fee it’s clear this was a deal the Reds simply couldn’t pass up.
