Best Alternatives to Alessandro Bastoni

Playing Style Analysis

Bastoni has quietly become the most dangerous defender in Serie A that no one talks about in those terms—a left-sided centre-back who functions, in practice, as a deep-lying playmaker wearing the wrong shirt number. His passing volume sits in the top 5% of defenders in the league, and his passes into the final third rank similarly elite, meaning Inter's attacking phases are frequently being *authored* from the back. The counterintuitive truth buried in his aerial win rate—merely average—is that Bastoni rarely needs to be tested aerially; his positioning is clean enough to make the contest irrelevant. The three closest DNA matches to Alessandro Bastoni:

• Fikayo Tomori(87% match) — A Ball-Playing CB. Statistically, he stands out as active in the tackle (2.3 tackles/90), meticulous in distribution (90% pass accuracy), wins the physical battle (56% duel success) and central to possession (72 touches/90).
• Giorgio Scalvini(86% match) — A Ball-Playing CB. Statistically, he stands out as active in the tackle (2.3 tackles/90), reads the game exceptionally (2.1 interceptions/90), meticulous in distribution (88% pass accuracy), central to possession (77 touches/90) and active off the ball (3.0 press score/90), contributing to defensive transitions.
• Pierre Kalulu(86% match) — Kalulu has quietly become one of Serie A's most progressive defenders — a ball-carrier in disguise wearing a centre-back's number. His 60.8 passes per 90 and 6.23 passes into the final third both land in the top 20-30% of defenders in the league, figures that reveal a player comfortable initiating attacks rather than simply recycling possession.

Similarity uses per-90 performance across playing-style dimensions. How Player DNA matching works →