5 Areas for Stephan El Shaarawy to Improve on with AC Milan Next Season
Stephan El Shaarawy's very name causes consternation and debate among AC Milan's fans.
One side considers his incredible talent to be an indispensable part of the rebuilding project facing the club. The other dismisses him as the second coming of Alexandre Pato—talented but destined never to be a top contributor because of his consistent injury problems.
He's obviously got talent coming out of every pore, and he's still only 22 years old. But despite that natural ability, there are definitely parts of his game that need to get better if he's to realize his potential and turn into a true world-class player.
What does he need to do? A good look at his game reveals several aspects that need improvement. We look at five distinct areas where the youngster can improve to truly shine.
Health
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Let's get the obvious out of the way first.
The biggest knock on El Shaarawy is that he hasn't gotten onto the field often enough. Since his breakout 2012-13 season, he has missed 316 days and 57 games as a result of knee and foot injuries, according to Transfermarkt.
Is the youngster simply brittle, or is there a deeper problem here?
The world-famous Milan Lab has long been lauded for extending the careers of men such as Paolo Maldini and Clarence Seedorf, but recent results haven't been as encouraging. Milan has gone through injury crises the last few seasons. Numerous players, both old and young, have missed significant time. The aforementioned Pato is often held up as an example of the Lab losing its touch.
Either the training staff is mismanaging El Shaarawy or the player's body is betraying him, which means that the Lab needs to build a regimen for him to strengthen it and keep himself together.
Either way, it's obvious that if he doesn't stay on the field, he'll never develop the way fans are hoping he will.
Crossing
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The role of the winger has changed in the last 10 to 15 years.
For much of the game's history, the winger was a speedy player who beat the full-back, got to the end line and fired in an accurate cross the center-forward could get his head to. But things have changed, as the fantastic book Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson chronicles.
The modern winger is often referred to as an "inverted winger." Rather than having right- or left-footed player line up on the side most suitable for crossing, the players have been switched to the other side of the field. That allows him to cut inside and either unleash a shot or lay the ball back for the striker or onrushing midfielders.
The exemplars of this new style are Cristiano Ronaldo and Arjen Robben, and El Shaarawy's game is a less refined version of theirs.
What this new style of play does mean is that crossing is becoming a lost art, and El Sha is the poster boy of that symptom. According to WhoScored.com, his cross-completion average last season was 0.2 per game, and it's never been higher than 0.8.
Crossing is not as important in the game as it was two decades ago, but being able to deliver an accurate cross is still a valuable trait because it brings variety to El Shaarawy's game. If the full-back marking him is forced to respect the possibility of a well-placed cross, it make it easier for him to take advantage of the strongest aspect of his game: cutting inside to create danger with the ball at his feet.
This is all about bringing variety to El Shaarawy's game and making it easier to cause danger in the attacking third. He doesn't need to turn into an elite crosser, but he does need to become a proficient one. If he does, there will be many more problems for a defender to have to address and make him much more fearsome as an attacker.
Chance Creation
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Scoring goals isn't a forward's only task, particularly when that forward plays wide. They need to create chances as well as take them.
This is something that El Shaarawy is still learning. According to Squawka, he only created 15 chances in 18 games in 2014-15. That's an average of .83 per match, and of those 15, four-fifths were key passes rather than out-and-out assists. Because a key pass—unlike it's cousin, the hockey assist—is awarded regardless of whether the chance it creates is converted, there's no guarantee that those 12 key passes turned into goals.
Contrast El Shaarawy with another young Serie A winger, Domenico Berardi, who Squawka clocked at 47 chances created in 32 matches—1.4 per game—with 10 assists in there. That's a lot more production, and it made everyone around him better.
This has never been Il Faraone's strong suit. The three assists he notched last season represent a career high in league play, and in 2012-13, he didn't record one at all in Serie A.
For El Shaarawy to become a more productive player, he's going to have to amplify this aspect of his game and become more of an all-rounder. If he can create more chances—and most importantly, serve up the final ball on a more consistent basis—he'll be infinitely more dangerous.
Consistency
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Other than his health, this is probably one of the biggest gripes fans have about El Shaarawy.
After the midway point of the 2012-13 season, El Sha dropped off. Some blamed the arrival of Mario Balotelli that January. What's more likely, though, is that El Shaarawy—then only 20 years old—had simply been ground down.
He was playing in his first full season and featuring in the Champions League to boot. He was the hot hand, and after the departure of Zlatan Ibrahimovic that summer, the team needed him up front. Massimiliano Allegri was unfortunately forced to play him to death.
Since that season's winter break, he has never been able to string together top-level performances the way he did in 2012. Every once in a while, a fantastic game will pop up, such as the penultimate game of this recently concluded season against Torino. But he needs to string the kind of game he had against the Granata together consistently to rise to the level Milan needs him to get to.
Leadership
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After a string of strong captains in Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini and Massimo Ambrosini, Milan is currently experiencing a leadership void.
The current captain, Riccardo Montolivo, has been sidelined by injury for much of the last two seasons. When he has been on the field, his play has done little to inspire the fans. Apart from a good recovery to the second half of the 2012-13 season, he has been mediocre at best and downright awful at his worst.
The people who have taken over the armband in his absence have done little to inspire anything at all. The likes of Sulley Muntari and Daniele Bonera—players who don't belong in a top-division team—have cheapened the armband. Ignazio Abate brought fight to the role but little quality.
It's hard to believe, but given the instability in the team, El Shaarawy is actually going to be one of the longest-tenured players at Milan when play opens next season. The team needs real leaders to emerge, and a talented player such as El Shaarawy is a prime candidate.
If he can stay on the field and produce, he can take charge of the locker room and develop into the kind of on-field leader Milan desperately needs.
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