Breaking Down What Summer Signing Luiz Adriano Will Bring to AC Milan

AC Milan's summer rebuild continues. Big-money signings have come in the form of Andrea Bertolacci (€20 million) and Carlos Bacca (€30 million), but another acquisition, made with less hoopla and less money, could make a major difference for the team this season.

Luiz Adriano has made quite a name for himself at Shakhtar Donetsk since 2007. Since becoming a regular in the lineup two years later, he's never failed to reach double digits in goals across all competitions. Two seasons ago he ended the Ukrainian Premier League season at the top of the scoring charts, netting 20 times in league play and adding five more between the Ukrainian Cup and the Champions League.

With Sinisa Mihajlovic arriving and changing up Milan's shape, Adriano was targeted to reinforce the front line alongside Bacca. He arrived on the same day as the Colombian for €8 million.

Adriano has been the subject of transfer rumors over the course of the years, but, despite the departures of teammates like Willian, he's always stayed at Shakhtar until now. Some people take that as a sign that he lacks the quality to be a true difference-maker with a big club.

His detractors add ammunition to that argument by pointing out the lack of opportunity he has been given at the international level.

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Brazil, for the first time in a long time, is lacking a true center-forward to pair up with their main flair player. Neymar was forced to work with the likes of Jo and Fred (not to be confused with Adriano's former teammate at Shakhtar, who is a midfielder) at the World Cup. At this year's Copa America, Dunga made do with Diego Tardelli—30 years old and playing in China—a washed-up Robinho and the exciting but unproven Roberto Firmino.

That Adriano has only managed four caps during this period of void at the center-forward spot has been seen as a sign that the player lacks the quality to be a truly top-level player.

What Adriano does do when he's in form is score goals. Lots of them.

While he does show the occasional flair dribble that his country's soccer is known for, Adriano is at his best as a poacher. He excels at sniffing out where the defense will give him space, and with using it when he gets to it. The majority of his goals are one-touch affairs, tapping in low service or authoritatively heading home. He can also shape his shots well—quite a few of his goals have come from fairly acute angles.

He does spread the wealth around a little bit, but his assists come more from one-touch layoffs or by finding an open teammate on the break rather than from his own creativity. Indeed, passing certainly isn't his real forte—WhoScored.com clocked his pass completion percentage in the Champions League at a measly 61.9 percent.

This raises two questions. The first is whether Adriano can use these gifts as effectively in Italy as he did in Ukraine. Serie A is the most tactically complex league in Europe and the most difficult to score in. The level of competition of the UPL, by comparison, is pretty poor.

While he did score nine times in the Champions League last season, five of those goals came against Belorussian outfit BATE Borisov—not the heaviest of competition. When he came up against Bayern Munich, he was kept quiet.

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Italian teams aren't going to give Adriano the space that Ukrainian players did. Individual defenders like Giorgio Chiellini and Kostas Manolas aren't going to let him get away from their marking so easily, and they're going to exact a hefty physical price for doing it.

The second is whether he and Bacca can work as a pair. Despite Bacca's decent assist numbers, he also works best as a goal poacher. Neither of these players should have to bear a significant part of the creative burden in the attack.

It may turn out that good performance from attacking midfielders will allow the two to coexist on the field, but if that doesn't happen, they'll be far too similar, and Mihajlovic will have to play only one or the other with a more creative player like M'baye Niang or Alessio Cerci partnering.

If he can adapt well to Italy, then Luiz Adriano gives Milan a solid goalscorer who can devastate a defense. But even if he does, he may have to keep trading places with the much-pricier Bacca. If he doesn't manage to adapt at all, he'll be another in a long line of disappointing strikers to come through Milan since the departure of Zlatan Ibrahimovic in 2012.