3 Areas for Atletico Madrid's Antoine Griezmann to Improve on in 2015-16

It's been a rather spectacular 18 months for Antoine Griezmann.

From a raw talent at Real Sociedad, the Frenchman has become a leading player at the international level with France and both a marquee signing and genuine star at Atletico Madrid. 

Indeed, in little more than one season at the Vicente Calderon, Griezmann has raced to 30 goals in all competitions for his new club and is now considered to be among the hottest young players in Europe. 

Yet, like all those he's competing with, there remain areas in which Griezmann can make significant improvements. 

Across the following slides, we examine three. 

Right-Foot Skills

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Free-kicks, long-range thumps, curling strikes, chips, dinks and even bicycle-kicks: With his left foot, Antoine Griezmann has shown us the complete repertoire at Atletico Madrid. 

For a player of such slight stature, he's also surprisingly good in the air. 

But if there is something that the Frenchman does lack in front of goal, it's the ability to threaten with his right boot as well as his left. 

When he's working purely on reactions and instinct inside the box, or when he's broken through the defensive line and is faced with only the goalkeeper, it's not a problem. But when Griezmann is running with the ball and defenders are ahead of him, his movement patterns can be predictable due to his reliance on his left boot. 

From the right, he almost invariably cuts inside; from the left, he tends to take the outside route. Certainly, there are times when he does the opposite—this season he's regularly drifted centrally from the left to create for others—but he's rarely a scoring threat himself in such circumstances because he's forced onto his right side. 

Of course, Griezmann will continue to be prolific as a predominantly left-sided player, but adding a right-sided threat to his game would take him to another level again. 

Strength and Balance

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At just 5'9" and 67 kilograms, Antoine Griezmann is never going to dominate penalty areas with force. He could spend a year trapped in a weight room and still never be that guy. 

Yet, the Atletico Madrid star could benefit immensely from adding greater strength to his game, and a good example for the Frenchman is Sergio Aguero. 

Aguero is actually shorter than Griezmann, but with extraordinary power through his core, the Argentinian is able to absorb heavy contact from defenders and stay on his feet, almost bouncing off them to find space thanks to his low centre of gravity. 

In fact, if there was an official thigh muscle-to-height ratio in football, Aguero would surely be at the top of the list. 

Griezmann, though, is still a forward who more often than not requires space around him to score. Since moving to the Vicente Calderon, the bulk of his goals have come either by getting in behind the defences or by finding the rare spaces in congested penalty areas. 

Because of his slight frame, rarely will you see him threaten the goal after taking contact from a defender.

Of course, Griezmann is a different sort of forward to Aguero, and he'll probably never possess that sort of immense power. But if he were to develop greater strength, he would add another dimension to his game. 

Big-Game Record

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Since moving from Real Sociedad to Atletico Madrid, Antoine Griezmann's goal tally is mightily impressive. 

In 59 appearances in all competitions for Diego Simeone's side, the Frenchman has struck 30 times to become the most prolific forward at the club in that time. 

What can't be ignored, however, is the distribution of those goals. Of the 30, just one has come in what you might term a big game: clashes with last season's top six in La Liga and knockout games in the Champions League. 

Indeed, that lone strike came during Atleti's 4-0 thrashing of Real Madrid in February, but his other 29 goals have come against Olympiakos, Malmo, Cordoba, Malaga, L'Hospitalet, Athletic Bilbao, Levante, Rayo Vallecano, Eibar, Almeria, Real Sociedad, Deportivo La Coruna, Elche, Las Palmas, Galatasaray and Getafe.

For Griezmann to be considered among the world's very best, the goals need to start coming against fellow heavyweights.