Why Chelsea, Arsenal & Spurs are preparing to fight for Italy’s £42m ‘revelation’

The season may have barely started, but plenty of teams are already planning their transfer business for next summer – and one player in particular is starting to crop up on the shortlists of just about every top club in the Premier League. 23-year-old Samuele Ricci will not be a Torino player for too much longer.

The five-cap Italy international, who has started all of the Azzurri’s Nations League matches so far, has a burgeoning reputation that is beginning to outgrow the team he joined a little less than three years ago. The midfielder’s name has cropped up in connection with Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City in a recent Caught Offside report, while Sport Witness also picked up on a story in the Italian press which describes him as a “revelation” and suggested Tottenham Hotspur and AC Milan as potential destinations.

An heir to Andrea Pirlo?

Ricci, whose elegant playing style and role as a deep-lying playmaker have drawn inevitable but not entirely specious comparisons with Andrea Pirlo, will be on the move soon one way or the other. He has two years left on his contract in Turin and Caught Offside suggest that the price tag for his services would come in at around €50m (£42m), a value which which he may well maintain next summer even with just 12 months remaining on his deal simply due to the level of potential competition for his signature. But would be worth the money, and is he as good as several elite teams seem to believe?

A quick scroll through Ricci’s stats probably wouldn’t excite many supporters. He doesn’t create vast numbers of chances or force turnovers en masse. But as is often the case with midfielders who sit deep without playing as a ‘destroyer’, the eye test is more revealing than the raw numbers.

Ricci’s grace on the ball stands out instantly. His control is fluid and his first touch and capacity to quickly shift the ball out of the way of pressing opponents and into space is hugely impressive. Coupled with some exceptionally economical passing and strong ball retention, that’s part of the reason why so many teams value him – he’s highly resistant to opposing pressure and rarely loses the ball in midfield, usually finding ways to move play on in a cool and calm manner.

And while being press-resistant himself, he’s also strong when the ball is coming back the other way and has a great sense of positioning, often dropping back into defence at just the right time to cut off a through ball. His judgement in the tackle is good but he rarely ends up diving in, typically looking to use his body to get between man and ball and either take control or clear. His stats sheet doesn’t show a player racking up vast quantities of tackles, but that’s partly because he’s good at ensuring he doesn’t put himself into positions where he needs to slide in in the first place.

So far, so good, but there are limitations to his game. He may have much of Pirlo’s quality on the ball and passing range, but he doesn’t quite have the great man’s vision, and he could create more chances rather than simply moving the ball on to the next player. His long-range passing is accurate, but he doesn’t use it too frequently. Some managers would likely encourage him to show more verticality.

He is also not a natural dribbler and when he wins the ball he will often knock it into space and away from opponents but seldom tries to surge into the room he’s created, preferring generally to move the ball on and leave the next phase to somebody else. He’s also not a significant threat in the final third, and while he’s happy to run in from deep to support attacks, his end product is limited and several of the small handful of goals he has scored owe as much to poor goalkeeping as to his own finishing. He has three Serie A goals and the same number of assists in 79 games, and a couple of those only really came about due to some distinctly slippery hands between the sticks.

The battle to sign him

The most negative reading of Ricci is that he’s more of a game manager than anything else, a composed presence in midfield who makes things easier for those around him without making anything much happen himself. Some managers – Pep Guardiola immediately springs to mind – are more than happy to have such players in their team, but even at Manchester City, players like Rodri chip in plenty in and around both boxes. Other managers may be put off by a lack of production.

The managers that do want Ricci will get an exceptionally gifted player who is easy on the eye, however, and will keep the machine he plays in well-oiled. The only real debate is where he would make the best of his career. City would be a natural fit, but already have Rodri provided that his recovery from a serious ACL injury goes smoothly.

He’d make sense at Chelsea, whose squad is built around the kind of double pivot that Ricci would logically thrive in, but again have numbers there already – signing Ricci might mean all but giving up on one of Enzo Fernández, Moisés Caicedo or Romeo Lavia. Arsenal, likewise, would want to see whether Mikel Merino is a sufficiently capable partner for Declan Rice before moving for another midfielder. Spurs need a midfielder, but Ange Postecoglou prizes verticality and the capacity to spring the ball forward at speed, and that isn’t Ricci’s strong suit. That may explain why the link with Spurs doesn’t seem to be corroborated as yet.

There’s a good chance that most of Europe’s elite sides at least consider a move given his quality, but finding the right next step will be as much of a challenge as establishing his newly-won place in Italy’s starting eleven for Ricci himself. Wherever he ends up, however, he will be a joy to watch for years to come.