The 10 Serie A players to explode in the last six months

Martin Macdonald

• 7 Feb 2022 13:01 GMT
• 4 min read

Udinese's Destiny Udogie is the most-improved Serie A player of the last six months, according to SciSports.

Using in-game data to calculate the performance of every player in the league, the Udinese star has statistically enjoyed the greatest improvement in his personal level.

Just over a decade ago, Udinese were among the best teams in Europe at scouting and developing young players.

The club has now moved back to that model of management and a number of promising young players are emerging. One of them is young left-back Udogie, who has also broken into the Italy Under-21 side. He boasts impressive physical attributes and pace.

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In second is Andrea Cambiaso. Genoa have endured a miserable 2021-22 season fighting against relegation but one of their few positives has been his emergence.

The 21-year-old is capable of playing as a right or left wing-back or midfielder and has been one of the most creative players in his position in the league. His agent claims that Juventus are interested in signing him.

In the January transfer window, one name that kept coming up was Giacomo Raspadori. His performances for Sassuolo have been promising, scoring seven goals in 21 starts.

One of the feel-good stories of Italian football over the past year has regarding Yayah Kallon.

He made his full Serie A debut for Genoa in the opening match of the campaign against champions Inter.

It completed an astonishing journey for the Sierra Leone forward, who arrived in Italy six years ago.

Kallon fled his homeland as a 14-year-old because a group of guerrillas had targeted him – as they do many young kids in the country – with the aim of kidnapping him to fight for their army.

It is also no surprise to see Dusan Vlahovic in this list as his increasingly effective performances earned him a massive move to Juventus in January.

How is the SciSkill ranking calculated?

Over the course of a season in Serie A, there are players who will enjoy increasingly poor performances and increasingly positive performances.

FootballTransfers, in partnership with SciSports, has determined 10 players over the last six months within Serie A whose performances have improved to a higher degree than anyone else.

SciSports explains how our development ratings are gathered:

"Among others, a positive development could be boosted by more playing time, playing time on a higher level or better performances on the pitch.

"A negative development could be due to the player being active on a lower level than he used to play, bad performances or the fact that he does not play that often as he used to do.

"A SciSkill Development of 0.0 could indicate that a player is performing exactly like our algorithm expects him to do. Another reason could be inactivity (e.g. a long-term injury or suspension)."

It should be noted that vast improvement does not necessarily mean that a player was underperforming previously.

Using those metrics, we can determine the 10 most improved Serie A players of the last six months.