Best Alternatives to Manuel Locatelli

Playing Style Analysis

Locatelli has spent years being the midfielder that makes everything work without ever making the highlight reel—and the numbers finally prove why that matters. Operating in Serie A's congested midfield battles, he ranks in the top 5% for passes per 90, tackles won, press intensity, and passes into the final third simultaneously; finding a player who dominates all four categories at once is genuinely rare. The counterintuitive read here is his goal contribution figures, which look pedestrian until you understand he's essentially the engine redistributing possession upward—those 15-plus progressive passes per 90 are what create the chances others finish. The three closest DNA matches to Manuel Locatelli:

• Ardon Jashari(80% match) — A Metronome. Statistically, he stands out as a capable chance creator (1.2 key passes/90), active in the tackle (1.8 tackles/90), meticulous in distribution (91% pass accuracy), central to possession (71 touches/90) and active off the ball (2.6 press score/90), contributing to defensive transitions.
• Teun Koopmeiners(80% match) — Koopmeiners is the rare midfielder who makes a team's build-up feel inevitable rather than effortful—a conductor who turns possession into progression with surgical consistency. His 91.1% pass accuracy places him in the top 10% of Serie A midfielders, but the more telling number is his 8.79 passes into the final third per 90, also top 10%—this isn't a recycler, it's a penetrator.
• Youssouf Fofana(80% match) — A Ball-Winner. Statistically, he stands out as a capable chance creator (1.5 key passes/90).

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