Tasos Douvikas and the importance of doing what needs to be done

In a game of football where strikers have to do everything and be the first at everything – the first to defend, the first to press, the first to make runs – and where they find themselves roaming all over the pitch and often far from their natural position, a centre-forward who stays in the penalty area and does what he should be best at risks looking like an outsider. It is somewhat ironic that such a striker should play for one of the teams most applauded and praised for the modernity of their style of play.

At Cesc Fàbregas’s Como, Tasos Douvikas plays as a centre-forward. He moves like a centre-forward, thinks like a centre-forward, waits like a centre-forward. Because the centre-forward’s role is often one of waiting. Above all, he scores like a centre-forward. Almost always from inside the penalty area, sometimes with his feet, sometimes with his head, very often turning up right on cue to meet the balls played to him by his teammates playing on the wings or in the centre, always behind him.

He scored two goals in the first half of the Serie A season. Fourteen last season. He has scored five in the league and two in the Champions League this season. All of them have very often been decisive goals.

Tasos Douvikas does not stand out in Como’s play for his flair or even his elegance. Yet he is exactly what is needed, the one you simply cannot do without. He is the last wheel on a cart that runs like clockwork, and yet the decisive one, because he is the one who turns the move into a goal.

The Greek striker wasn’t like that. He was used to moving about a lot, drifting out wide to create space for his teammates to run into. Even when he was scoring dozens of goals in the Eredivisie for Utrecht, he would often leave the penalty area to make the most of his excellent burst of speed. This is what René Hake, Rick Kruys, Henk Fraser and Michael Silberbauer – the four managers who successively took charge of the Dutch side – asked of him. They had all asked him to do this.

Cesc Fàbregas, on the other hand, preferred to have him do what few managers now ask strikers to do: just focus on scoring, play up front and let your teammates take care of the rest. And he, after feeling a bit out of his depth at first, began to do just that. Of course, he had to go through the disorientation typical of someone who’d been used to travelling from point A to point B via twists and turns, without anyone bothering to realise that it is, in fact, the straight line connecting the two points that is the shortest route.

Tasos Douvikas has adapted magnificently to this more defensive system, becoming simply a centre-forward: a player who scores goals and helps his team win.

Olive is back again this year – Giovanni Battistuzzi’s column on the (not necessarily) leading figures of Serie A. Brief, unfiltered profiles, perfect for reading over an aperitif. You can read all the other profiles here.