Football Season Guide

With coach De Zerbi at the helm, Sassuolo were one of the main surprises of the past campaign as they unexpectedly managed to reach the top 10 thanks to a pleasant and very aggressive football. They never really came close to fighting for the European spots but they could have even done slightly better at the end of the campaign, had they not won only 1 out of the final 6 games. However, they scored an impressive 69 goals, thus holding the 6th best attack of the league, while due to their open playing style they also happened to concede 63. With that in mind, Sassuolo hired Ayhan from Fortuna Dusseldorf and he may very well become one of the protagonists in the heart of the defence, alongside Chiriches, whose past season was plagued by injuries but was signed permanently from Napoli anyway. Left-back Kyriakopoulos and forwards Haraslin and Defrel also saw their loans turned into permanent deals after performing well in the last campaign. A huge group of players also returned from loans elsewhere but most of them seem unlikely to have ended their peregrinations. However, Sassuolo must be, above all, happy for managing to retain all their own stars, Berardi, Locatelli and Caputo, to name a few, as none of them has attracted the interest of the bigger clubs yet. Or they have but their proposals were rejected. Of the players who left, only centre-backs Romagna and Magnani were sometimes given playing chances but they will not be missed. Sassuolo are still looking for a defender and a midfielder but, at the moment, their main problem actually is that coach De Zerbi has a bloated squad at his disposal and a few more players will have to go.