Best Alternatives to Bryan Cristante

Playing Style Analysis

Cristante has quietly become one of Serie A's most underrated distribution engines — a midfielder who doesn't dazzle but consistently moves teams forward with purpose. His passes into the final third rank in the top 5% of the league, which tells the real story: this isn't a recycler, it's a progressor. The counterintuitive read on his average key pass numbers is that Cristante is threading balls *into* dangerous areas, not completing the final action himself — he's the architect before the architect. The three closest DNA matches to Bryan Cristante:

• Alberto Grassi(85% match) — A Ball-Winner. Statistically, he stands out as reads the game exceptionally (1.7 interceptions/90), meticulous in distribution (85% pass accuracy), wins the physical battle (61% duel success), heavily involved in play (57 touches/90) and active off the ball (2.4 press score/90), contributing to defensive transitions.
• Marten de Roon(85% match) — De Roon is the structural glue of a mid-tier side, operating as a high-volume metronome who stabilizes the chaos through sheer physical dominance. While his goal and assist figures are negligible, they mask a ball-progression monster; he ranks in the top 5% of Serie A midfielders for both total passes and passes into the final third, moving the needle far more than his "destroyer" reputation suggests.
• Mandela Keita(85% match) — A Box-to-Box. Statistically, he stands out as active in the tackle (2.2 tackles/90), meticulous in distribution (88% pass accuracy), wins the physical battle (63% duel success) and active off the ball (2.7 press score/90), contributing to defensive transitions.

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