Complete Tactical Profile of Bayern Munich Forward Douglas Costa

Last summer, Douglas Costa joined Bayern Munich at a time in his career when he looked to be a talented player who had lost his way. The German giants turned down the option of pursuing more expensive talents like Kevin De Bruyne, Antoine Griezmann and Raheem Sterling, instead going for the then-24-year-old Shakhtar Donetsk attacker.

Although his talent was well recognized from an early stage in his career, Costa had ended the 2014-15 season with modest tallies of five goals and seven assists in all competitions and commanded a transfer fee of €30 million, per Transfermarkt. It wasn't a pittance, but what Bayern paid for was not a world-class star.

Yet what Bayern got was a man who hit the ground running and immediately was able to fill the role of the injured Franck Ribery. Costa gave at least one assist in each of his first seven Bundesliga games, and he ended the campaign with seven goals and 18 assists in all competitions. Not bad for his first campaign in Munich. 

Matthias Schrader/Associated Press

Costa's one-on-one ability is his greatest asset.

    

Ribery Replacement

In the early stage of the season, Costa was compared to the player whose role he occupied in the Bayern team: Ribery. It was the most obvious comparison to make, and one that the Brazilian's attributes and productivity facilitated.

Like his French teammate, Costa's greatest asset is his ability to beat defenders in one-on-one situations. He has exceptional ball-control and explosive acceleration, just like Ribery. These skills are useful in counterattacking situations, but like Ribery, Costa possesses the rarer skill of being able to dance through set, deep-playing defenses.

Costa's dribbling in tight spaces is hugely important as a catalyst for goalscoring opportunities against stubborn teams that are reticent to venture out of their own half, of which Bayern face many every year. The absence of Ribery when injured or suspended from 2007 until 2009 showed just how flat Bayern could be in his absence, with Arjen Robben's arrival in 2009 easing a bit of the team's reliance upon the French wizard.

With Ribery and Robben both well into their 30s, the addition of Costa has secured the long-term ability of Bayern being able to create chances in ways similar to the Frenchman's style.

Despite their similarities, however, it's important to distinguish Costa from Ribery. They are certainly not the same player. For one thing, Costa is left-footed, while Ribery's favored foot is decidedly his right. The latter has spent his career as an inverted winger and played almost exclusively on the left wing.

Costa's left-footedness makes him much less of a scorer from a position on the left wing. And indeed, although he started most of his games on the wing, fewer than half (three) of his seven goals last season came in games in which he was deployed on the left flank, per Transfermarkt.

The Brazilian is much more an assist-giver than a direct scorer of goals, with his ratio of the former to the latter standing at 2.57:1 last season. Ribery's as a Bayern player stands at 1.44:1, per Transfermarkt.

Versatility

Although Costa has proven to be much more a provider than a scorer, he offers more versatility than Ribery in some ways. For one, his weaker foot is much better than Ribery's. Whereas the Frenchman had to figure out how to assist without so often crossing with his decidedly worse left foot, Costa can whip the ball into the box using his left or right foot. The use of the latter also allowed him to feature on the right wing last season, in the absence of Robben.

Almost exclusively a left-winger in the first half of the 2015-16 campaign, Costa played far more often on the right after the winter break. He formally lined up on the right flank in four out of Bayern's six Champions League knockout-round games. And in the Bundesliga, he started seven times on the left, four times on the right and four times in the center.

From the right, Costa looked a bit more like Robben, cutting inside from the wing and shooting on goal. He produced some stunning finishes from distance with his left foot, curling efforts with tremendous power that even the Dutchman might have envied.

Limitations

In addition to his use in many roles, the other highlight of Costa's spring 2016 campaign was his sharp decline in productivity. He showed occasional flashes of brilliance and didn't exactly struggle, but his direct contribution to scoring chances plummeted: In all competitions, he scored twice and gave just four assists during the spring.

German magazine Kicker, which had ranked him as the best winger (in German) in the Bundesliga for the first half of the spring and one of a select few "world-class" players in the German league, placed Costa at No. 14 (in German) on the list of best wingers for the spring campaign.

Analyst Gerald Asamoah labeled him the "biggest disappointment" of the spring, while the publication noted he became too predictable for defenders in one-on-one situations and lacked composure in front of goal.

It's a fair critique of Costa, whose footwork and pace may have shocked opponents initially, but who hasn't yet developed some of the clever subtlety that has distinguished Ribery from other fleet-footed dribblers. Nor has he become the reliable scorer that Robben, a player always known more for his brash directness than his inventiveness and finesse, has been throughout his career.

   

Summary

Costa overall experienced magnificent development in 2015-16 and ended the campaign a much better player than the one that joined Bayern a year ago. He finally began to touch the potential that he showed in his youth, and although pigeon-holed by many as a Ribery replacement, he demonstrated a range of skills that could make him a better—or at least more versatile—player than the Frenchman.

Costa perhaps is not the finished article just yet, though, as he suffered a setback after the winter break as opponents began to find him out. He now needs to develop his game mentally, to think a step ahead of defenders and to be a bit more crafty and inventive. If he can do that, he could become the perfect merger of Ribery and Robben.

@Mr_Bundesliga

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