Filip Kostic - The Phantom of the Touchline
Why are reliable but unassuming creative players often overlooked?
When Eintracht Frankfurt flew high in the 2018/19 season, the plaudits and eventual transfer offers came the way of Sebastian Haller, Luka Jovic and Ante Rebic.
Andre Silva would continue this trend, scoring 16 goals while on loan from AC Milan in the 2019/20 season and then 29 the following year when his move was made permanent.
These players would all leave the Deutsche Bank Park and instantly get worse (only Haller has really refound his form), but many people couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
It wasn’t till the 2021/22 campaign as Eintracht Frankfurt were crowned Europa League champions that people began to notice the true beating heart that had been running the German side for years.
At first, fans only caught a slight glimpse as he drifted down the touchline, and then people began to make out a shape as he curled a ball into the box.
And by the end, they could see him fully formed - Filip Kostic, The Phantom of The Touchline and a true creative force playing a left wingback.
Of course, Frankfurt and Bundesliga fans had been singing his praises for years, but why did it take so long for casual fans and more importantly, Europe’s top clubs to take notice of him?
Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about in this week’s paid Played on Paper article.
Kostic got his big move this summer, with Juventus picking him up for £17m as his contract at Frankfurt entered the final year. However, it seems a shame that he had to wait till he was 29 years old.
Lazio had missed out on him the summer prior thanks to a debacle with his transfer documents. The Italian side accused Frankfurt of giving them a fake email address while the German side rebuked this claim by stating that the Rome-based side had actually forgotten the K at the start of his name, therefore voiding any offers.
A few other Italian teams were interested, but not interested enough to stump up the £25m asking price for the player.
In the end, it was a good job that Lazio did not sign Kostic because he would not have suited the system that Sarri has put in place.
Sarri plays with wingers and this doesn’t suit Kostic. The few appearances he has made for Juventus there this season have highlighted his weaknesses (he managed four assists in eight games at LW, but one of those games where he managed two was against Inter and Dumfries doesn’t defend).
He doesn’t have the close control to dribble around opponents, nor does he have the blistering pace to beat his man, and I think this is part of the issue of why he went under the radar for so long.
The forwards and creative wide players that we put on a pedestal are the ones who are direct and can create for themselves as well as others - the likes of Rafael Leao, Marcus Rashford, Buyaka Saka and Vinicius Jr to name a few.
Kostic is not an attacker that gets the people on their feet despite his incredible output. Even the most dedicated of his stans would struggle to make a montage of his finest moments.
(I said they would struggle, I didn’t say they couldn’t do it)
However Juventus moved Kostic back to left wingback, the position he had occupied at Frankfurt, and he has thrived, racking up eight assists in the process.
The position allows him to find the space and time he needs to do the two things he does best; carry the ball consistently up the field before playing the perfect ball into the box for the attacker to get on the end of. He also provides a deadly threat from set pieces.
His lack of flair may be why his talent went undetected by casual fans, but that doesn’t explain why numerous clubs passed over him.
There was the consideration that the player might not fit tactically given his default role as a left wingback and reduced effectiveness the further forward he is playing, but I believe that the actual issue has something to do with our perception of creative players.
Pep Guardiola once said, “The most difficult thing in football is to score a goal.” And I think this mindset has altered our perception of how we believe goals are scored.
Strikers always get the majority of the plaudits for scoring a chance in the moment, whereas the player that assists them usually only gets recognition at the end of the season for their cumulative total rather than the original action.
And if the striker doesn’t score, we’ve already stated that a player like Kostic doesn’t do anything outstanding in the build-up, so his good work to create the chance disappears into the ether never to be spoken about again.
It has been a problem that has also plagued Luke Shaw at Manchester United, a player that I think is very similar to Kostic.
Shaw has many attributes that are similar to the Serbian wing-back, he is an elite ball carrier and he creates multiple chances per game for his attackers. This has been the case for many years but the general narrative around the 27-year-old United full-back is that he has only had a good six months during his time at Old Trafford.
(Injuries have also contributed to his struggles, but overall his lack of perceived output is why he has been undervalued)
It should be noted that during those six months was when Shaw racked up his highest assist total for United and the times that he was undervalued coincided with when the team around him was misfiring.
Kostic has had better luck with forwards (and if we’re being honest he’s a much better creator in the final third than Shaw), as the large transfer fees that Frankfurt were able to command for Haller, Jovic, Rebic and Silva would suggest.
But he still suffers the same fate as other efficient, but for want of a better word, ‘sauceless’ creators.
He is subject to results bias and he will always receive secondary credit for his work. The goalscorer always has his name put first, even if 90% of the reason he scored was because of the assist.
He is Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls, the true talent propping the group up while the spotlight shines brightly on Beyonce. The player who carries the piano so that others can play.
What is clear, is it is easier to appreciate these phantoms once they have departed. Their absence speaks louder and is more obvious than their contribution.
During Frankfurt’s run to the Europa League final, Raphael Santos Borre looked like a competent or dare say it, good striker, scoring 12 goals in all competitions. However this season without Kostic he has only scored three goals.
Luckily, Frankfurt have stumbled upon an incredibly well-rounded attacker in Randall Kolo Muani who has softened the blow of Kostic’s departure.
Kostic will continue to be a reliable servant in Turin, doing his best to prop up the careers of Dusan Vlahovic and Arkadiusz Milik while keeping a low profile out on the left wing.
Angel Di Maria with his supreme technical ability and directness will continue to be the star attraction for Juventus (for good reason he has been excellent), but how influential Kostic is to this struggling Italian side should be enough to make us reconceptualise how we view creative players.
Individual stars will always command the headlines, but as the sport in general moves towards superteams that include many moving parts aka players with specific roles and functions, we need to learn to appreciate players who are well-oiled machines that stick within that framework.
We need to change how we view the game, look beyond the statistics that we hold on a pedestal and look at players through both an individual lens and also in the context of the team as a whole.
Players like Kostic and other similar creative players fit the mould of those who would benefit from the change, but until we learn to appreciate him properly, he will be just another phantom roaming up and down the touchline.