What are Kalidou Koulibaly’s weaknesses?
Robin Bairner
- 18 Jul 2022 14:11 BST
- 3 min read
Chelsea spent big to sign Kalidou Koulibaly from Napoli, but the Premier League side have been warned by former manager Rafael Benitez that the Senegal international “won’t be so dominant” in England.
Thomas Tuchel’s side lost Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen this summer at the end of their contracts to Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively, forcing the Blues into the transfer market.
Chelsea’s new owners, fronted by Todd Boehly, elected to spend €40 million on the 31-year-old, who has long been touted for a move away from Serie A.
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Benitez, who signed Koulibaly at Napoli from Genk in 2014, explained to the Athletic, that the defender still has a margin for improvement.
“He must improve his concentration at times. He can be guilty of losing focus and can be overconfident, but he has been hugely influential at Napoli and people I know and trust have told me that he has been the best centre-back in Italy during this time.
“This season will be the Premier League for him and he could be fine for the way that Tuchel wants to play. He has similarities with Rudiger - he is very good at running with the ball, he’s good with both feet.
“Is he a little bit too nice? We will see what happens at Chelsea. As I said, in Italy he was fine because he was so quick, but I doubt he will be so dominant over here.
“Aerial ability wasn't his biggest strength but in Italy that mattered a bit less and he was ok. It will be interesting to see how that develops in the Premier League but he was always very keen to learn and he spent time with me and my staff after training sessions to work on his heading and improving his technique.”
Koulibaly: What the stats say
Data analytics experts SciSports back up Benitez’s assertions. While Koulibaly excels with the ball at his feet, his defensive statistics do are not so impressive, and indeed he does not rate in the top third of Serie A defenders in any of their broad four categories of defensive qualities.
Koulibaly fared particularly poorly when it comes to pressing and prevention, but in a Chelsea side that tends to dominate opponents, it may be that this is only exposed to a limited degree.
