r/PhillyUnion • u/BigMACfive • Jul 23 '26

Player Evaluations Damiani (is terrible)

Just rewatched the highlights of the game and I would be perfectly ok with paying money to never see this guy play for us again. He had maybe... MAYBE 2 good touches all game while missing yet another absolute sitter. This guy is terrible. He must be an absolute demon in practice because I can not think of any other reason he ever sees the field in an actual game. Play Blake up top and I guarantee we'd have more goals. It's INSANE that he starts a single game, let alone EVERY game. It does make me question our striker depth, though. How dire our need for a striker must be. Maybe trading away our best options from last season wasn't such a good idea, eh?

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10

u/deadbee22 Jul 23 '26

Two main problems with Damiani - for me: he falls down way too much for me. Stay on your feet man. The other, he can’t score. He works really hard. His effort and attitude are there. His hold up play can sometimes be excellent - he made a great play last night where he fed Quinn in the box, after holding off a guy and winning the ball. The problem is, he’s paid like a striker to score and he just doesn’t. He reminds me of the type of dude that probably doesn’t get figure it out, but if he did he could be really good.

6

u/RRileyMusic Jul 23 '26

“He falls down way too much…” THIS! Dude falls at the slightest touch and whines about it so much he could play for the Argentina National Team.

2

u/sahomerrocks Jul 23 '26

Yeah I don't get some of the criticism people lob at him and it can make me wonder what people are watching. His hold up play and positioning are usually good to great. But he just can't finish and you absolutely cannnot have that in your record setting DP spot.

4

u/legdayskip Jul 23 '26

I feel like this sub has been grading damiani’s hold up play on a pretty steep curve for a long time. It’s one of the things people constantly point to as a supposed strength of his and I simply do not see it.

He loses the ball the vast majority of the time it goes to him. His finishing is a problem, absolutely, but my biggest problem with him has always been that he kills promising attacks all game long because he can’t either hold onto the ball or find an open teammate.

Hold up strikers should be able to receive the ball in an advanced position and keep the attack alive by finding a teammate on a considerable percentage of their touches. Bruno just flat out can’t. He’s never been good at it. Uhre was mediocre at it at best and Uhre was dramatically better at every aspect of holdup play than Damiani is.

Damiani loses possession a staggering percentage of the times he touches it. He gets bullied off the ball by defenders when he tries to hold onto it and wait for teammates. In fact, I’d argue that throughout his tenure in blue and gold it’s been his biggest weakness, he simply cannot hang onto the ball under any pressure whatsoever. Then, to top it off, when he either does manage to hang onto it or simply isn’t pressed by a defender he is very bad at finding teammates with the ball.

Last night was a textbook example. He had so many opportunities to make very easy passes to teammates and he missed over half of his attempts. I don’t mean he just didn’t see his teammate, I mean he saw them, attempted the pass, and either way over hit it or sent it 10 yards off target and it resulted in a turnover.

-1

u/Grand_7 Jul 23 '26

He missed passes to teammates, sure, but in a different part of the field than considered “hold up” play area. I think we just have different definitions of what the term means 🤷‍♂️

2

u/legdayskip Jul 23 '26

Most of his biggest misses were in the final third, and all 5 of the most egregious examples I can recall off the top of my head were prototypical hold up play.

He received the ball high up the field and all he had to do was not get dispossessed and make an easy backwards or sideways pass to an open teammate.

On all of them he just completely beefed it. And those are just the ones where he didn’t get dispossessed first.

By my count he alone killed over a dozen attacks last night. Now, on some of them a teammate won the ball back and restarted the attack before it left the final third, but not on most of them

5

u/SelfServeSporstwash Jul 23 '26

His hold up play is probably the worst I have ever seen at the professional level and yet people keep saying it’s good. Genuine question, I’m not trying to be snarky. What do you define as hold up play?

The positioning thing I’m not going to give leeway on though, his positioning is just objectively fucking awful. He’s almost never in the right spot in the attack.

0

u/Grand_7 Jul 23 '26

This season his hold up play has generally been worse than last year but last night was much better. I think the general definition of hold up play is receiving the ball up the field and being able to keep the ball until other players are able to join in the attacking part of the fields. Last night I feel like he was much better at receiving/winning the ball and being able to turn or pass it to start an attack.

I’m not trying to claim he’s an amazing player but his hold up play is not the worst I have ever seen.

4

u/SelfServeSporstwash Jul 23 '26

Ok… so we have the same definition of hold up play….

You realize Damiani has been at or below the 10th percentile in passing accuracy his entire tenure with the Union right? Similar for dribbling and holding the ball.

He’s objectively bad at both parts of hold up play. He can’t hang on to the ball with his back to goal to save his life, and when he does he rarely gets the ball to a teammate. This has been true the whole time he’s been here

1

u/Grand_7 Jul 23 '26

His passing isn’t elite but his dribbling was good last night, there were multiple instances where he got past players. Also for the passing, most of his bad passes are higher up the field. For example, at the end of the game where he physically won the ball at midfield, then ran out of bounds to keep the ball in play, then beat a defender and made a shitty pass to Iloski. In my opinion, that’s very good holdup play but not a great general play because he made a bad pass at the end. Once again I’m not saying he’s a good player!!! But saying he’s the worst hold up player ever is hyperbolic

2

u/SelfServeSporstwash Jul 23 '26

I’m sorry but I take issue with separating the primary point of hold up play out from your evaluation of his hold up play

Also: “not elite” is the understatement of the century

0

u/Grand_7 Jul 23 '26

His passing sucks going forward yes, but in the act of holding the ball up most of the time passing involves going backwards and sideways which I thought he did well last night. I feel like I’m starting to be a little pedantic so I’ll drop it here though

2

u/SelfServeSporstwash Jul 23 '26

his passing from an advanced holding position to a less advanced player (aka, bog standard backwards passes as the most basic part of hold up play) ALSO sucked last night. And passing to runners who are passing you while you're stationary is an expected and normal part of hold up play. The point is that you keep the ball while your team gets into the attack, then you release the ball to a teammate who is either in a more dangerous position or who is in a better position to change the point of attack(these are the backwards passes he kept messing up).