Bianconeri Bi-Weekly Breakdown: Tactical Insight II - What Does Arthur Actually Do?

Welcome to the bi-weekly tactical breakdown where we take a deep dive into recent in game tactics used by Juventus. These will be based on individual players or the team in general. As always, we encourage the Bianconeri community to chime in and create discussion.

Introduction:

In this breakdown, we are going to analyze our newest Brazilian central midfielder, Arthur Melo and what he brings to the table for Juventus in the regista role. First, let’s define what a regista is. The regista is a player who dictates the tempo from a deep lying midfield position and possesses accurate long and short distance passing. They have the specific role on the team that is tasked to get the ball from defence to attack as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Barcelona fans were flux with emotions when the Pjanic-Arthur swap deal happened this summer. Some were happy and some were extremely disappointed. Juventus supporters on the contrary, were jumping for joy. Arthur is 6 years younger, earns less salary, and is arguably better than Pjanic.

Upon his arrival, Arthur was labelled as a player who dictated tempo, had tight ball control and was very tidy in possession. To this point we have seen some glimpses of his brilliance but we fans are left wanting more. There is so much potential here with the diminutive Brazilian and we will take a look at how he can improve and if he has a long term future in black and white.