Dominik Szoboszlai is perhaps the player with the least defined role as a ‘Number 10’ at Liverpool, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing…
WHEN we were in America this summer, I said on a show I thought the number 10 was more of an eight position.
We’ve become obsessed with numbering what we want from players since Claude Makelele turned up. Patrick Vieira was never a four (he really wasn’t). Teddy Sheringham never labelled a 10 (he really was).
If numbers on shirts representing positions were to return, it might do us all a favour. In lots of ways, it might solve the conundrum that is currently Dominik Szoboszlai.
Hungary’s captain has become a puzzling footballer to many. His gifts are unquestionable: athletic, quick, defensively responsible and an eye for goal.
Yet in loads of ways, he’s the Liverpool player whose identity has shifted most from this time 12 months ago.
Szoboszlai initially looked like someone who could get you 10-15 goals and assists, and you could almost guarantee there would be some goal of the season contenders in there.
His goals against Aston Villa and Leicester City early last season were like watching football through the decades.
The 1990s’ remnants of him punching the ball into floor and up in the net and 2010s’ strike across bar-and-in bouncer from 18-20 yards out.
Both looked like they could accompany the tones of Georgie Thompson and soundtracked by Sash’s ‘Encore Une Fois’ and ‘We Found Love’ by Rihanna.
On current evidence, he perhaps looks more suited to that Jürgen Klopp midfield eight than a Arne Slot number 10.
That said, he struggled in the second half of last season for form and fitness. The thing about Szoboszlai we’ve all come to know is that a bad game is noticeable.
That isn’t a criticism in the sense that he’ll still show supreme confidence and try to display his abilities. But Szoboszlai not influencing a football match doesn’t make sense.
His current identity is both pivotal and peripheral to what Liverpool are doing. I thought he was excellent against Bologna.
If he’d scored the chances he should have converted against Manchester United and Wolves, we’d be far more excited about his start.
Yet here we are, pondering the what.
There’s another part of the puzzle which remains unsolved, being what Slot actually wants from the position.
He’s hinted at more goals. That perhaps suggests he sees Szoboszlai’s role as chief creator. Someone tactically astute, but with all of the proficiency and lock-picking ability of Phillippe Coutinho between August 2016 and December 2017.
Szoboszlai’s season in numbers is noteworthy. He ranks extremely high, in the 87th and 96th percentile for turnovers and pressures. However, he’s lagging in the 12th and 31st percentile for dribbles and shots.
There’s no doubt he’s key to how the team are pressing. Usually, Szoboszlai will join with the number nine (there it is, again) to lead an opposition press and squeeze possession in order to win the ball back higher up the pitch.
His enthusiasm for this is palpable. What we’re all now looking for is some variation on his ability to score and assist.
He’ll never be Frank Lampard in the position, but arriving late on to moves and scoring more goals in and around the penalty box will certainly improve those numbers.
Now and again, a player comes to the club you can’t really pin down in terms of a positional identity.
The likes of Adam Lallana, Dirk Kuyt, and Danny Murphy became this incarnation of a football hatchet man.
If they were all in the same midfield, it would likely be part of a newly promoted giant killer labelled as some dysfunctional hype machine they’re queuing up to analyse.
Like those before him, Szoboszlai needs to be homed in a Liverpool team. He needs to find where on the pitch he’s most impactful.
Slot, for now, seems to believe this is where Szoboszlai belongs in his new-look Liverpool. A few more sprinkles of magic here and there will ensure the current noise around him quickly subsides.
There is so much we still don’t know. There is so much more to come.
For a player like Dominik Szoboszlai it should be about excitement, not trepidation.
Buy Dan Morgan’s book ‘Jürgen Said To Me’ on Klopp, Liverpool and the remaking of a city…
