Serie A Team of Season: The Meaning of EA Sports’ Snubbing of Hakimi

Moroccan international Achraf Hakimi reacted last week to EA Sports’ snubbing him in their “team of the season” for the Italian football league. The Moroccan player amusingly asked the FIFA publisher whether they “have something against me.”

EA Sports published its “Serie A Team of the Season” on May 18, listing the players it thinks have dazzled observers of the Italian football league this season.

After trailing behind Juventus by few points last season, Inter Milan, Hakimi’s club, clinched the Italian league this year and made history in the process by putting an end to Juventus’s nine-year dominance of Italian football.

Most observers agree that Hakimi, who transferred to Inter Milan last summer from Real Madrid after two successful seasons on loan at Borussia Dortmund, has been one of the leading lights of this year’s Inter team.

But EA Sports picked Juventus’s Cuadrado as the Serie A’s best right-back. “Cuadrado has been Juventus’ best player this season. He has been a true beacon of hope in a rather forgettable season for the Bianconeri,” they wrote.

As for Hakimi, the FIFA publishing company acknowledged both the brilliant season the Moroccan player has had individually and his contribution to Inter’s collective success. “Hakimi, who joined Inter in a €40m deal from Real Madrid last summer, has been a delight for Inter,” they said. “Usually playing on the right hand side, whether as a RM or RWB, Hakimi is one of the best in his position in the Serie A and scored seven goals and also assisted another six.”

However, they only picked Hakimi as a substitute and not even for the right-back or right wing back position. EA Sports seems to prefer the Moroccan as a right-midfielder or winger, a position they think allows him to more freely express his creativity. Plus, their argument for excluding Hakimi from the Serie A team of the season seemed to be that the Moroccan “slowed down a bit in the second half” of the season.

But the ranking did not sit well with Hakimi, who took to Twitter to protest against what he perceives as an unfair assessment of his season with Inter and his current place in Italian football. “What a joke! If you have something against me tell me,” the Moroccan tweeted. “This is bull… thank.”

Prior to joining Inter, Hakimi’s consistent brilliance for Dortmund caught the attention of the football world. “His electric pace and intelligent movement off the ball help him get to the byline with great frequency,” the Guardian said of the Moroccan player in September 2020.

In December of the same year, ESPN, a US sports publication, went further in its assessment of Hakimi’s quality. The outlet ranked the 22-year-old player as the world’s second best right-back for the 2020 season.

“Hakimi has fast become one of the best right-backs in world soccer,” ESPN said, adding that the Moroccan right-back is “a spectacular, adventurous two-way player capable of brilliance on either side of the ball.”

Consistency vs quality: The Trent Alexander-Arnold comparison

An understandable counter-argument in favor of EA Sports’ snubbing of Hakimi would be that all these accolades in support of Hakimi are for his performances in the 2020 season.

The idea is that a season is a very long time in the footballing world, where a player can go through many cycles in a few months or weeks. Football is full of tales about players with mouth-watering qualities and great promise who ultimately failed to live up to expectations.

Similarly, there is no shortage of players who excelled in one half of a season but were far below average in the other half. Consistency, not raw quality, is what matters to most – if not all – football watchers and commentators.

One striking example this season would be Trent Alexander-Arnold, who ranked above Hakimi last season as the world’s best right-back. The 22-year-old English player, who was almost universally hailed throughout 2019 and 2020 for redefining the role of the modern right-back, has had a complicated season this year with an embarrassingly underperforming Liverpool.

But Hakimi has been more than consistent this season. In fact, only Romelu Lukau and Lautaro Martinez – Inter’s prolific, impressive attacking duo – can be said to have been by far more important than the Moroccan in Inter’s triumph this season.

In addition to upping his defensive play, Hakimi remained the lethal offensive weapon he’s been in the past three seasons. The lingering feeling remains, however, that the Moroccan’s defensive positioning still needs some work. Should he work a little bit more on his defensive qualities, say commentators, he would indisputably be the best or at least in the top 3 in his position worldwide.

Antonio Conte, Inter’s coach, has described acquiring Hakimi as one of the most important investments he has made to transform Inter into a winning team. But even he appears to think – as did EA Sports – that the Moroccan right-back is more at ease in a tactical setup where he can rely on a solid defensive buildup behind him to express his devastating offensive prowess.

“Hakimi is a player with great potential, he was born to make the fifth in midfield having important offensive propensities. He needs to improve in defence, playing with three central players enhances his qualities,” Conte told Sky Sport Italia earlier this year. “He is the [most] important investment of this market, he must continue to work but he gave a good interpretation of the game. Let’s hope this continues.”

Conte’s comments readily bring to mind what most English Premier League commentators have said of Alexander-Arnold. Hakimi and the Liverpool right-back are very different players, and yet they are eye-catchingly similar in how they impact – positively or otherwise – both their team and the opposition.

As the Guardian’s September 2020 article about Hakimi’s performance in Germany almost presciently put it: “In terms of his attacking output, you could consider Achraf Hakimi the Trent Alexander-Arnold of the Bundesliga.”

For critics of both players, the point about snubbing them now and then is not that they are not excellent players. It is that they lack the commanding defensive qualities most people expect of a “traditional” right-back. While they are phenomenal and consistently dangerous on the offensive, they can be a liability for their team in the defensive phase. But are Alexander-Arnold and Hakimi really a “liability”?

As ever, the answer is never absolute; it always boils down to a trade-off. For fans and commentators who prefer the security and the caution that a “traditional” right-back can and should offer, the Liverpool playmaker and Hakimi cannot be the first choice.

But for those who value the inventiveness, exhilarating pace, and the additional attacking edge that the “modern” right back is subtly expected to offer, dropping the likes of Hakimi and Alexander-Arnold from any squad is nothing short of criminal.