FCN has an offensive new signing to report: Kwadwo Duah comes from FC St. Gallen.
The 25-year-old London native comes with a recommendation of fifteen goals this season in the Swiss Super League. Last year, the former Swiss U20 national player scored nine goals for FCSG. The attacker, who also has Ghanaian citizenship, was trained by the Young Boys in Bern. After a few loan deals in the second division to Xamax Neuchatel, FC Winterthur and Servette FC in Geneva, the Swiss capitals then let the striker go to FC Wil, where he – coached by Ciriaco Sforza – scored twelve goals in 35 games and thus made up for one Transfer recommended back to the first division, in which he was only used very sporadically for the Bernese. Under ex-FCN U23 coach Peter Zeidler, Duah quickly became a fixture at St. Gallen in two seasons. Duah started 50 games, scored 28 goals and provided nine assists in a total of 76 competitive games for the green-whites.
It is not officially known how much money the club pays to the club where ex-cluber Alain Sutter is sports director. Speculations are in the mid to high six-digit range. So what characterizes Duah? If you look at the shot statistics from last season in the Swiss Super League, you will see that no one shot on target as often as Duah. Averaging more than four completions per game with an average xG of 0.14 xG per shot results in a strong 0.58 xG per 90 minutes. The shot card (Graphic 1) shows that Duah takes an unlikely shot from time to time, but usually looks for a shot in the center and in the penalty area. This is certainly partly related to the way St. Gallen play, which involves a lot of ball contact in the penalty area and a lot of creative passes in central positions, but also with Duah’s style of play.
Duah is not a player looking to dribble (Chart 2), but he can dribble as his dribble winning rate of almost 62 percent shows, but he is more of a player who is active in the penalty area, as the heatmap shows . It was different before his time at St. Gallen, when Duah also played on the wing and was more into dribbling. In the center, however, his shooting skills come into play more than on the wing. When behaving against the ball, the 25-year-old is on the right track. Three of his goals last season (Chart 3) came from early ball wins. The counter-pressing conquests of the attacker (Graphic 5) also look decent, but FC St. Gallen also played a much more aggressive pressing than FCN last season.
The shooting skills also stand out when comparing data via Smarterscout (Graphic 4), where the Swiss received the highest rating for his performance last season, converted to the standard of the second division. Duah is clearly a finishing striker. The duel behavior with and against the ball also performs well with Duah. Only the defensive work looks in need of improvement. A comparison with the MatchMetrics Data Wizard also shows that Duah performs very well when it comes to choosing the closing positions and that the evaluation of the offensive performance is also positive overall. Of course, none of this is a guarantee. Duah has to get used to the standard in the second Bundesliga, even if its level of performance is comparable to that of the Super League. It seems unlikely that Duah will be the only attacking signing of the remainder of the window, but there is at least one striker who has scored at least ten competitive goals in each of the past three seasons. Now Duah can get used to the new teammates in the training camp.
