Player Focus: Milan Badelj

When the transfer window closed on September 1st, many HSV supporters were celebrating, full of joy about the club’s most recent acquisitions. After having captured the former German number one goalkeeper René Adler on a free transfer from Bayer Leverkusen earlier in the summer, the “messiah” Rafael van der Vaart, also known to Hamburg fans as the “little angel”, finally decided to re-join the club he left for Real Madrid in August 2008. The city’s newspapers went haywire about the return of the Dutchman, who had been a crowd favourite and media darling during his first spell at the club and expectations, after a poor start to the season, quickly rose. In the shadow of all the hype, one man arrived almost unnoticed. 

Milan Badelj, a 23-year-old central midfielder from Croatia, joined Hamburger SV from Dinamo Zagreb at the end of August. After lengthy talks and negotiations with the controversial Dinamo boss Zdravko Mamic, Hamburg sporting director Frank Arnesen agreed a fee of about €4m for the Croatian champions’ captain and most important player. Arnesen touted him as a signing who will improve the team at HSV as they seek to regain their place in European competition for next season.

Having started 14 games for the “Rothosen”, Milan Badelj has a WhoScored rating of 7.49, which ranks him as the 15th best performing player in the Bundesliga so far. At Hamburg, only captain Heiko Westermann has a higher ranking (7.62) than him. Fellow new signings, René Adler (7.29), while being the top rated goalkeeper in Europe’s top five leagues at the moment, and Rafael van der Vaart (7.14), both fail to top the Croatian in this department.

Badelj has strengths on the attack as well as in defence. His main assets are probably his anticipation, his vision and his playmaking abilities from a deep position, allowing him to support the more advanced Rafael van der Vaart with his passing and structuring of the game.

“He can anticipate three to four passes”, former Croatian national team manager Slaven Bilic said about Badelj in October, and this ability also shows up in his defensive stats. 3.4 interceptions per game are on his record this season, leaving him in joint-ninth place among Bundesliga players. The former Dinamo man has also made 58 tackles this season, which sees him joint-third place in the league; further evidence of his defensive capabilities.

“Bilic is right. I know that I’m not a sprinter, but exactly because of that, it has always been important to me to compensate this on the pitch”, Badelj agrees with his former manager, and these attributes also help him on the attack, where he is able to play his passes in order to control the pace of a game. An average of 52.1 passes per game, including 1 key pass per game, show his worth to the team, with only captain Heiko Westermann (57.3) averaging more at the club. 87 accurate long balls (17th in the league) also indicate the great variety that Badelj has in his passing game.

For a player of his size (186cm) and position on the pitch, the Croatian also moves across the pitch impressively, allowing him to escape opponents in crowded areas in central midfield with little time or space to do so. His 33 successful dribbles this season rank him joint 17th in the Bundesliga, though those above him are predominantly wingers and attacking midfielders. 

Badelj’s only real weakness is his lack of strength in the air. For a man with his physique, he averages an underwhelming 0.8 aerial duels won per game, a figure that leaves him way down the Bundesliga rankings. 

His strengths outweigh his weaknesses by far though and, just like Rafael van der Vaart, Milan Badelj is a very good individual player, who also improves the team’s balance as a link between defence and attack. His lack of pace is covered by his outstanding positional play, great vision and eager anticipation, and considering Badelj did not even have a pre-season with the team, it would not be unreasonable for Hamburg fans to expect even more from him in the future. 

“Milan’s development is nowhere near finished. There’s a lot of talent in him”, Hamburger SV’s technical director Lee Congerton says about the “diamond from Zagreb”, as Badelj was called by the Croatian press as a 19-year-old after Luka Modric has left Dinamo for Tottenham Hotspur in 2008. Yet bigger clubs from the Barclays Premier League might come in for Badellj as well, though probably sooner than Hamburg would hope.