Best Alternatives to Rodrigo Ely

Playing Style Analysis

Ely is a defensive fire-extinguisher whose statistical profile presents a fascinating paradox of pure ground-level dominance and surprising aerial fragility. While his 81.3% pass accuracy is nothing to write home about in a league that increasingly demands ball-playing center-halves, he compensates by being an absolute wall in 1v1 situations, ranking in the top 5% of Serie A for duel win rate. The counterintuitive insight here lies in his physical profile: despite his height, he languishes in the bottom 10% for aerial duels won, yet his 0.92 shots per 90 suggest he is far more dangerous in the opposition box than his own when the ball is in the air. The three closest DNA matches to Rodrigo Ely:

• Alessandro Bastoni(80% match) — 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.
• Alessandro Buongiorno(80% match) — Buongiorno has quietly become one of Serie A's most complete defensive operators — a centre-back who wins the ball without fanfare and moves it with purpose. His interception numbers place him in the top 10% of defenders in the league, which tells you something important: this isn't a defender who simply reacts, he anticipates.
• Yann Bisseck(80% match) — Bisseck is the rare centre-back who threatens to embarrass your striker and your midfielder in the same passage of play. Playing in Serie A's top tier, the German-Ivorian defender sits in the top 5% for pass accuracy at 92.9% — a number that reflects genuine composure in tight spaces, not just sideways recycling.

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