One of the newcomers this season in Serie A is Ebenezer Akinsanmiro, a midfielder who came up through Inter‘s Primavera youth team and now plays for Pisa. The 2004-born player had already made a name for himself last year in Serie B wearing the Sampdoria shirt and is now shining in the top Italian league as well.
How Akinsanmiro plays and his statistics
Right from the start, Pisa coach Alberto Gilardino has shown great confidence in Akinsanmiro, and in fact, in the first six matchdays of Serie A he has made five appearances. After playing only 28 minutes in his debut against Atalanta and then sitting on the bench against Roma in the second matchday, the Nigerian has not left the field since and has played the full 90 minutes in each of the following four league games before this break.
Gilardino trusts his 2004-born player, who is proving he can play, and play well, in a context like Pisa in Serie A. His offensive stats are obviously modest, but that’s because the entire Tuscan team has created little in these early rounds of the league and is a team with some difficulties (so far managing to score just 3 goals).
Despite his great size and his ability to run for the entire match, Akinsanmiro is also showing good quality with the ball at his feet. As shown by SofaScore data, the 2004-born player has an average of 91% completed passes and also 75% on long balls, a stat that is not easy to keep high.
Thanks to his important physical qualities – he is 185 centimeters tall – the Nigerian midfielder often manages to win physical duels and in fact averages 2.2 tackles per game against opponents, also managing to recover as many as 6.6 balls per game, which is an excellent figure. Akinsanmiro is still at 0 errors leading to opponent shots and has not yet received a yellow card.
While it is true that with 51% of physical duels won he has already shown he can compete with other Serie A players, it should also be noted that Akinsanmiro still needs to improve his dribbling, with only a 46% success rate so far, and his aerial duels (43% won). From the Pisa player’s heatmap, it is clear that he knows how to move well across the entire midfield, but with a preference for the left-center, somewhat reminiscent of the movements and runs into the box of Mkhitaryan at Inter.
The contractual situation with Pisa and how Inter can get him back
In February 2024, former Inter coach Simone Inzaghi gave the then 19-year-old his debut in Serie A for just 14 minutes against Lecce. However, this is truly his debut season in the top Italian league, and thanks to it, he is learning to measure himself against high-level players in order to grow.
He could return to Inter at the end of this season since, formally, Akinsanmiro is owned by the Nerazzurri club, with Pisa potentially able to buy him outright, and then Marotta and Ausilio would still have a buy-back clause to play as a last card to avoid losing control over him. In a midfield that might need dynamism and height, the addition of Akinsanmiro could be very useful, and Chivu already knows him very well from the years spent together in the Primavera.
