Juventus’ low-key victory against Chievo Verona was an unmemorable opener for large portions, yet produced some huge talking points — the most notable of which was young Frenchman Kingsley Coman. The teenager, recruited from Paris Saint-Germain over the summer made his Serie A debut, and although he left the field a little after an hour into the match, his was the name on everybody’s lips at full-time.
In truth, it shouldn’t have been such a surprise that incoming Bianconeri coach Massimiliano Allegri was willing to throw the Frenchman in at the deep end. He tried a similar approach with Stephan El Shaarawy at AC Milan and was rewarded with a breakout season from the young forward, and one that he struggled to replicate since Allegri’s departure.
Coman is not as conventional a forward as El Shaarawy, meaning that Allegri started the season against Chievo playing, effectively, with two deep-lying forwards, as neither Tevez nor Coman are out-and-out target strikers.
That said, while there was a certain similarity in their basic roles against Chievo, Coman remained more static than Tevez, staying centrally and drifting wide. Tevez, by contrast, roamed around the attacking third, with the Argentinian’s dynamism and workrate ensuring he could keep the effort up for the whole 90 minutes. It meant that Tevez was involved far more often than Coman was, but that the Frenchman tended to have more space to operate in whenever he received the ball.
The 18-year-old was removed with just over 20 minutes to go, having made a considerable impact in the game. Previous incarnations of Juventus under Antonio Conte had relied on Andrea Pirlo’s metronomic passing and the forward runs from Arturo Vidal to prompt attacks.
Adding Paul Pogba to the mix further increased the team’s dynamism, but in terms of the team’s overall mechanism, Conte’s Juventus build-up play and chance-creation came from the midfield. Coman offers a new variant to that approach. He offers pace, meaning he can surge past defenders, boasting of an astounding acceleration that will allow him to catch opponents flat-footed. Those attributes are new weapons in the Juventus arsenal and should ensure that Coman is able to continue to feature in Allegri’s first team.
Of course, he is only 18 years old and thus still very raw. Coman’s final ball can lack finesse at times and, against Chievo, he fired off a couple of long-distance shots when retaining possession might have been the better option. With time and experience however, that maturity will come.
In Coman, Pirlo might also find an ideal outlet in the youngster’s explosive pace and willingness to run, especially with the likes of Pogba and Vidal allowing him the luxury to pick out his passes.
Juventus have moved on from a number of forward options in the last year too of course. Mirko Vucinic has gone to the Middle East, Dani Osvaldo departed to Inter and Fabio Quagliarella has left to join city rivals Torino. Although Alvaro Morata has come in to the club, his injury will surely afford Coman with opportunities to shine within Juventus’ smaller cohort of forwards. The fact his game is so different will make him a useful alternative should matches look to be going stale.
Although Coman has played only a little over an hour of Serie A football, he has come with high pedigree and despite his youth, has impressed his abilities onto not just his brief cameos in Ligue 1, but also at the World Youth Cup.
He joined Juventus with sky high aspirations, and after just one appearance, has shown that he at least has the potential to live up to them. It has to be assumed that he will be used sparingly by his new coach this season — but equally, it can be safely assumed that when he is involved, he will be well worth watching.
