Dia, how the Salernitana striker plays — Sportellate.it

The Salernitana striker is one of the best in the league.

Boulaye Dia. To be read strictly Boulayè Dia. The assonance of the stressed double vowel that enters your head and never comes out. A tune that, needless to say, has turned into music. The Salernitana fans dedicated a choir to him, exploiting This Girl of Kungs, which the Arechi speaker puts after the goals: no text, no artifice, only the rhythmic repetition of his name and surname, borrowing the idea they had had in Liverpool with Gini Wijnaldum.

A name that, with its sung counterpart, evokes an intimate bond with the audience. A bond that doesn’t need to be built over time, nor is it a slave to goals or assists. It’s a natural, genuine bond. A sort of imprint twilightiano. You see him galloping across the field and you wish you could run in his place. Or rather, next to him. You see him score and you would like to hug that friend of yours who is fulfilling himself, share with him the joy of a goal achieved. Because Boulaye Dia is there, close at hand; he plays for himself but he belongs to everyone.

Murphy’s law

Born and raised in France, at the age of 12 he saw his first real test for Saint-Étienne vanish due to a mechanical breakdown in his father’s car. Dia continued his career in the Olympique Lyon youth team, where he was noticed by the coach at the time Pascal Moulin. Everything seems resolved, the accident of years before a mere detour from the highway, when the worsening health of his father forces him to return to his hometown of Oyonnax. To deal with the family’s emerging economic problems, the 18-year-old Dia obtained a diploma in electronic engineering and began his apprenticeship in the sector. A shareable choice, probably obvious. We will/we’ve all done it: an unjust renunciation for an imperative purpose.

The turning point

However, all personal events have a turning point which in this case is the contract torn up with the amateur club of the Southern Jura of Lavans-lès-Saint-Claude, a town in eastern France a few km from Oyonnax.

The young Dia in action with the Jura Sud shirt.

Dia feels the need to go back to treading the green lawn. The typical feeling of someone who has had to give up his vocation or his dream out of compulsion. But this is a story with a happy ending and the latter can already be glimpsed at the end of the 2017/18 season, which finished with 15 goals in 21 games. In July 2018 he was then bought by the newly promoted Stade Reims in Ligue 1. The times of the three weekly jobs are a mirage and the young Dia gives it all on and off the pitch. He even offers to help a friend dealing with an electrical fault in the house. Obviously skeptical, he prefers to contact a more experienced electrician, who ends up confirming Dia’s version.

Since then no more wires and generators, only balls and penalties. The rest is recent history. Dia’s career continues to grow: 3 goals in the first year in Reims, 7 in the second, 14 in the third season. Then the move to Villareal in the summer of 2021, the triumph in the African Cup with Senegal, the goal in the semi-final of the Champions League against Liverpool. So a slight decline and, amidst general distrust, the arrival in Salerno with the aim of regaining continuity and trust. Less than a year later, time has proved him completely right, the valuation has more than doubled and the summer auction will begin shortly.

A complete striker

Let’s start from a fundamental assumption: Boulaye Dia knows how to do many things on the pitch and for this reason he reflects a certain image of generosity. Of course, he also has weaknesses and aspects of the game to improve, but his predisposition to the art of listening and learning is tangible. He seems to roam around the field slyly, but more likely he navigates with his antennas extended to pick up information and absorb suggestions. On the pitch Dia seems to float between the lines indulging his intelligence in reading the development of the action which leads him to always choose the best position in which to be useful to the team.

Dia is a generous player, we said, who spends a lot of energy in the non-possession phase, even by retreating deeply. Not infrequently he can be seen chasing the opposing carriers backwards, or lowering himself to the line of midfielders. In this regard, it is emblematic that after the external débâcle with Atalanta (2-8 Certainly), the then coach Nicola decided to switch to a more careful 4-3-3 in the following matches against Napoli, Lecce and Juventus, with Dia deployed as a winger. These were matches in which the Senegalese found himself carrying out purely defensive tasks, also given the caliber of the opponents who pushed Salernitana back for long stretches of the match. The team didn’t benefit from the tactical change and the Piedmontese coach was sacked in favor of Paulo Sousa, who soon reorganized the team by putting Dia back at the center of the attack. A solution which, combined with other expedients, contributed to the unbeaten streak of 10 consecutive games (second only to Guardiola’s Manchester City, at 12), slipped by Salernitana from the end of February to the beginning of May, in which the grenades stopped also Milan, Inter and Naples. In this period the Senegalese experienced his best moment, culminating with the goal at Maradona and the home hat-trick with Fiorentina.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4avB5B4Zk8Q

Dia unleashes her full potential when she has room to move and can attack the door in front of her. When you start running, you have the strength to drag the whole team up with you: in Serie A you are in the 85th percentile of attackers who lead the most balls (given Fbref). He is not a particularly technical dribbling player, but he has an ability to protect the ball and a stubbornness in hand-to-hand duels that allow him to often come out on top in one-on-one situations. Dia doesn’t have a very high top speed, but he is quick on his first steps and has great resistance over medium-long distances. When he runs in the open field, these characteristics give him the appearance of a small tractor capable of raising the team with his buckling done half technique and half effort.

Dia, as mentioned, is a very generous player who spends a lot of energy working away from the box and who sometimes pays the price for this generosity in front of goal. In his career he has never been a relentless finisher: with the goal scored against Roma yesterday, his 16th in this Serie A, he is experiencing the best scoring season of his career. Dia works best as a support striker at a more physical and static striker; an attacking partner who can keep the opposing centre-backs constantly engaged and push the defense back, freeing up space on the trocar for Dia’s desperate accelerations. Also in the Senegalese national team, coach Aliou Cissé most often prefers to deploy Dia as a right winger or as a second striker, to exploit his ability to start from far away, in less congested spaces. Dia looks like a player who proliferates in chaos: the best context for him is intensity with and without the ball, long transitions, those situations in which he can tilt the pitch with his chaotic creativity.

Due to her stubbornness in hand-to-hand duels, Dia has a good game back to goal. You don’t have an excellent touch technique, yet when you work the ball on the frontline you often manage to clean it up, get rid of the pressure and connect the game with field changes or through balls. Her ability to alternate feverish ball-and-chain management with a less instinctive distribution game makes him one of the most complete strikers in our league.

Even the goals scored this season are a reflection of his versatility. He scored some very finely crafted goals, such as those at Verona o al Napoli, with two left-footed shots at the far post; others as an area forward, like the one to Lazio, in which he attacked the far post well after Bradaric’s cross from the left; still others, his trademark, attacking long spaces behind the opposing defence, in transition: i first due against Fiorentina, the one at theAtalanta. In addition to the 16 goals, Dia has also provided 6 assists this year: the same as Luis Alberto, more than Pellegrini, to name two excellent finishers in the championship. At the first attempt, he then became the most prolific striker in the history of Salernitana in Serie A, surpassing Marco Di Vaio. All this prolificacy in front of goal is the truly exceptional side of Dia this season. A striker who has built a reputation on dirty work in the service of others and a certain lack of coolness in front of goal, who suddenly becomes the footballer with the best goals/shots ratio in the top five European leagues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4MtlsysMfU

An essential style

The numbers and statistics pitted above are the icing on the cake of a season lived as a protagonist. The Dia appreciated this year in Serie A is a player who may be inconspicuous but extremely decisive. His is an essential and democratic style.

Essential because it aims at acquiring an immediate advantage. Through a through ball, a deep movement or a personal initiative, the first objective is to quickly obtain a gain in the offensive action. Contextually, the Senegalese rarely revels in finesse and embroidery. Nor do her dribbles stand out for their flair and originality. A sudden change of direction, a feint with the body or a touch to the ball just before the opponent is often enough to elude his intervention. Often, he outruns his opponent of physicalwith a sudden jerk, more than of technique. In Dia’s style, epee prevails over foil.

This is also why Dia’s game seems accessible to everyone, emulated by everyone. Seeing Dia play, one gets the feeling of being able to repeat her movements. It’s a naturally illusory feeling, but it seems that in Dia’s game the long hours of training are secondary to the pure instinct to play football. In some ways her style seems to have remained as rough as that of a boy. It is thanks to this chaotic and joyful way of being on the pitch, however, that Dia manages to convey the sense of pure and uncontaminated passion for the game. The one that makes people from all over the world and of all ages happy to run after a ball.