BACKGROUND
Born on March 17th 2001, Pietro Pellegri is a product of the Genoa youth academy. Son of Genoa Assistant manager and Team manager Marco Pellegri Pietro equaled the record for the youngest player to have played in Serie A at 15 years and 280 days. Pietro took center stage when he opened the scoring for Genoa in Francesco Totti’s last home game at Stadio Olimpico (Roma would win 2-1).
Monaco, in a bid to replace their outgoing superstars in Bakayoko, Mbappe and Bernardo Silva signed Pellegri for 25M in the winter transfer window of January 2018. Pellegri played 22 Games for Monaco scoring 2 Goals and Assisting Once.
Pellegri has been plagued by injuries at Monaco but hopefully that changes at Milan.
PLAYING STYLE
Pellegri stands tall at 6ft2 (188 cm) and has a lean build which suits a very athletic style of play. Pietro Pellegri likes to take long strides which in turn gives him the ability to accelerate very really quickly.
Being pacy it gives Pellegri the pace to be the striker who presses the Center back’s not allowing them to settle. For Monaco Pellegri scored a goal by tracking down passes and unsettling defenders by forcing them to make decisions quickly and making mistakes. From a managers point of view he is ready to work hard and cover the kilometres which gives him the miles.
Something that Lukaku spoke about his time with Conte and Inter that struck was his ability to play with his back to goal. In modern football, even strikers are expected to have ability with their feet to bring other forwards and attacking midfielders into and pulling defenders out of position. With his hold up play Pellegri can help player like Diaz and Leao to make forward runs before finding them.
Against Sampdoria Maignan demonstrated a different ability to play direct balls over the defensive lines, with Pellegri Milan now have someone who can actually use his hold up play and Aerial ability to bring the ball down and control the ball and bring team mates into play. He however needs to be more aerially dominant
Pellegri has a very good first touch and a very soft touch making him to be nimble footed and this helps Milan in terms of a good a striker in a 1 striker system and bringing the best out of other forwards in the system. Given his control it gives Pellegri good ability to be good on 1v1 and take defenders out and beat them which disturbs defensive structure of the team.
Tactically speaking Pellegri can act as perfect foil to playing alongside a no.9 which gives pioli tactical flexibility to play a 2 upfront with Milan now having depth in the striker department.
Where Pellegri lacks is in terms of concentration. Often Pellegrini can be seen making silly errors and mistakes which can be avoided if he concentrated.
STATS
DEAL OR NO DEAL
Saving the worst for the last. Pellegri’s injury history is very worrisome. For someone who has played only 22 games in 3 odd seasons questions need to be asked whether Pellegri can make it big again
A slight positive note for Pellegri is that his ACL is still intact. An injury that recurs (Conti and Zaniolo) ACLs are career ending.
But then again Pellegri is younger than Mbappe, Haaland, Sancho etc etc and has bags of potential. If Pellegri can stay fit he can be a treat. Milan wants to slowly ease Pellegri into the system
A low risk high reward signing, Pellegri is going to be mentored by his idol Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Hopefully he can imbibe a few qualities from the big man and take Milan forward
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