Adam Masina

Adam Masina     22     Defender     Bologna     Morocco/Italy

Skinny

Those who have been reading the IBWM100 for a few years will be well aware of the Davide Santon Wars. Party A (Jeff) feels he’s a future Italy captain still to this day, Party B (Dave) feels, as he always has, that he’s a bit crap. Well, Adam Masina doesn’t quite find himself in either of those categories, but he does produce a decent amount of debate at IBWM Towers.

We think there’s a player here and occasionally there are moments that really give you pause. It’s often a cross as he’s blessed with that innate ability to treat each as a chance to pick a specific player out rather than just banging-it-into-a-good-area (copyright Mr. N. Warnock, 1990). But also there are moments of very little of note, games that he struggles to influence or wingers who pin him so far back he stops trying to get forward. One week he’s a B, the next a D. We’ll forgive him as youth and inexperience is the answer to consistency issues in 99% of such cases, but he feels like he may go either way.

2016 has been…

…really good at times, so-so at others, bit of a roller-coaster at left-back (which sounds more fun than it is).

This is a bit of rarity for this reviewer who has been part of the 100 since we began in 2011. I reckon that I could pick four or five games out from this last 12 months that would 100% convince you Adam Masina was a superstar in the making. I reckon that I could also pick you four or five games out from his last 12 months that would make you genuinely question his inclusion on this list. In and amongst are games where he flits between the two benchmarks from move to move. 

But we have a theory.

The IBWM think tank convened and decided thusly; he needs to be in a better team. Brilliant, aren’t we? We shall elaborate below.

What’s next?

Sometimes you see a player who is slightly out of sync with his teammates and it makes them look worse than they actually are. Bologna are a funny team, they don’t lose loads of games but they draw far too much. One week they can look really exciting, the next stodgy and lethargic. Notice a pattern? We think Masina is going to be a player who mirrors his team - when things are good he’s great, when things are tough let’s not go there.

So parachute Masina into a top six side and we think he could be wonderful, really embracing a higher level, but will he get there unless he finds a way to be a bit more consistent as is? We don’t know, he’s fun to watch but he may turn out to be merely ‘decent’ when there’s excellence within.

If this review sounds overly negatively it really isn’t supposed to; there is a lot to be excited about but he may need a move to really develop further. There is nothing wrong with being a solid professional footballer but there could be a bit more than that here in the right circumstances. Too old for next year’s list but we’ll keep watching, make us believe please…

C   The talent is obvious, but so are the frustrations - which wins out in the end?