Player focus: Marcelo Brozovic's stellar start to the season

MILAN - Inter are now nine games into their season and eagerly await the return of league football with their match away to Sassuolo at 12:30 CEST on Sunday. But before then, let’s take a look at one of our most important players and his performances so far this season. After this man’s dominance in the Serie A rankings for passes (both attempted and completed) and distance covered last year, it’s no surprise to see Marcelo Brozovic right back at the top of things once again this season.

All these numbers and statistics only serve to justify the Croatian’s regularity in the starting line-up, having played every single minute of the league so far with 630 under his belt; Milan Skriniar being the only other Nerazzurri player to boast the same achievement. Brozovic heads the rankings for completed passes in Serie A, sitting on 575, over 50 more than the next highest figure for any other player. That’s not all, he’s also the player with the most touches after the first seven games, with 695. Numbers that tell you how much Brozovic is involved in the Nerazzurri’s good play. Although, Brozovic’s stats don’t show just quantity but quality too, with his pass accuracy of 91.1% in the league, an astounding figure that demonstrates his technical brilliance and confidence on the ball. He also has no fear further forward, maintaining just as high a ratio with a pass accuracy of 87.1% in the opposition half. This is merely a hint of how much our number 77 creates, an example of which can be seen in Gagliardini’s goal against Sampdoria, born purely out of Brozovic’s creativity and invention. The statistics also go a long way in proving this, with a quarter of his passes being through balls.

Just as we saw last year, Brozovic’s work rate certainly doesn’t drop even when Inter lose the ball: he has won back possession 58 times this season, and more than anything he absolutely dominates the rankings for distance covered each game. His average in Serie A this season has been 12.7 km per game, almost an entire kilometre more than the players who follow him in this chart.

On top of all of this, Marcelo Brozovic has added goals to his game. He has scored two so far this season, the first in the league opener against Lecce with a right-footed longshot. The second was however the most important: a vital goal in the #MilanDerby.