Scouting with Kognia: Manu Koné and the art of being available

Scouting conversations usually start with a number: how many passes, how many recoveries, where a player sits in a ranking. In this series we want to start somewhere else. Rather than asking how many, we ask how: how a player moves, where he positions himself, and how his behaviour changes with the role he is given.

To do that, we combined the full Kognia suite. The Kognia platform gave us the player profile and the video behind every action. Kognia Flow, our MCP connector, helped us query the tactical data directly using natural football language, from the location of individual movements to the split of each behaviour by game state. In addition, our solutions turned those queries into the visuals you see in this analysis.

Our subject is Manu Koné, AS Roma’s 25-year-old midfielder. We compare his last two Serie A seasons, 2024-25 (28 matches, 2,263 minutes) and 2025-26 (29 matches, 2,670 minutes), focusing on the behaviours that define a supporting midfielder: how he offers himself, how he combines and how he finds passes under pressure.

From pivot to left-sided connector

The first thing the data tells us is that Koné’s job changed. In 2024-25 he was used mostly as a defensive midfielder, rotating between the right, left and centre of the pivot, with occasional spells further forward. In 2025-26 his role became far more defined: he played almost exclusively as a central midfielder, with around 80% of his touches coming from the left side of the midfield pair. A player’s output only makes sense against the job he is asked to do, and this analysis looks at how his behaviour adapted to that new job.

Moving to overcome lines, not to hide behind them

Koné’s defining behaviour is what Kognia calls horizontal overcoming support: a movement to receive a pass that takes at least one opponent out of the game laterally. He produced 18.4 per 90 minutes in 2025-26, against a Serie A average of 12.1. It is the movement of a player who constantly adjusts his position so the ball can travel around a block rather than into it.

The detail is in the location. On average these movements start just beyond the halfway line, around five metres left of centre, and they are short: small, well-timed shifts of a couple of metres to open an angle, rather than long runs. Koné is not trying to get in behind the opposition midfield, and his vertical overcoming support sits right on the league average in both seasons. He offers the side-on angle that allows the next pass to break the line.

The map confirms the pattern. More than six in ten receptions happen in the middle third, and seven in ten on the left side, with the main cluster in the left half-space, just around the halfway line. Koné rarely receives deep in his own half: his role is to offer the angle once the ball has already progressed past the first line of pressure.

2024-25 vs 2025-26: How the profile changed

The comparison below covers the supporting and combination behaviours that define Koné’s game. With a stable role and a full season of minutes in each campaign, it gives a clear picture of how his behaviour adapted.

In the new role, Koné became the player teammates look for when they are in trouble, and the one who gets the ball out of trouble.

Comparing each season with its own league average adds an important layer. Koné’s linebreaking behaviours became more distinctive: horizontal overcoming support went from 1.2x to 1.5x the average, identifying passing lines under pressure from 1.5x to 1.7x and filtering a pass between lines from 1.6x to 1.9x. Emergency support moved from below average to exactly average.

Less of a combination player, more of a structural one

The behaviours linked to close combinations tell the opposite story. As a pivot in 2024-25, Koné was heavily involved in short associations: his third-man support and one-two support were both around twice the league average, and his third-man pass was 2.5x. In 2025-26 third-man support fell to around half the average, one-two support to 1.3x, and third-man pass to 1.9x, still one of his strongest traits but less dominant.

Read together, the two seasons describe a clear evolution. In 2024-25 Koné was a combination midfielder, connecting through short one-twos and third-man patterns. In 2025-26 he became a connector: the player who offers the lateral angle, receives under pressure and finds the pass through the lines himself.

How the game state changes his job

When Roma are leading, Koné moves less to break lines laterally (23.7 per 100 touches, against more than 32 when drawing or trailing) and becomes more of an outlet for teammates under pressure, with his emergency support peaking at 8.8.

When Roma are trailing, he does the opposite: the highest rate of line-breaking movements and of passing lines found under pressure (21.4). The same player, reading the match and adjusting his priorities.

What he does not do, and why it matters

In 2025-26 Koné was not a ball hunter: his pressure on the ball carrier sat among the lowest of Serie A central midfielders, and he rarely pressed immediately after losing the ball. His defensive value lies elsewhere: he recovered 4.3 balls per 90, slightly above the central-midfielder average of 4.0, and progressed play after 2.4 of them (average 2.1).

The recovery map shows where. 62% of his recoveries happen in the middle third and 31% in his own third, with only 6% in the final third. The densest area sits just inside his own half, in the left-centre channel he occupies in possession. Koné does his defensive work in the middle of the pitch, not high up it.

Reading where the ball will drop

The next question is how he wins those balls. Kognia separates the different ways a player recovers possession, and the MCP allowed us to compare each of them, and the movements behind them, with every Serie A central midfielder with at least 900 minutes.

Koné is not an interceptor: his interceptions (0.61 per 90) are 16% below the central-midfielder average, and his tackles won are slightly below it too. Where he stands out is the loose ball. He wins 2.19 second balls per 90 (+15%) and makes 28% more recoveries in the middle third. He also reaches those second balls after a shorter run than the average central midfielder (16.7 m vs 18.8 m), which suggests he is already positioned closer to where the ball drops, and he keeps possession after 73% of them (average 67%).

A club that needs an aggressive counter-presser or a pure ball-winner in that role would be looking at a different profile. A club that needs a midfielder who reads where the ball will land, secures it and moves the team forward would find a strong fit.

The first pass after winning the ball

Winning the ball is only half the job. Using the MCP, we linked each of Koné’s recoveries to his next action in the same possession, frame by frame, to see what kind of pass follows and how quickly it comes.

The answer is clear. In 91% of his recoveries Koné makes the next pass himself, and he does it almost instantly: the median time between recovery and pass is 0.2 seconds, and 71% of those passes leave within a second. More than half (56%) go forward, almost double the share across all his passes (29%), and one in three overcome opponents (33% vs 25%).

The price of that ambition is a slightly lower completion rate (85% vs 90%). Koné accepts a little more risk to attack the space the opponent leaves behind in the moment they lose the ball. Seven of those first passes were filtered between the lines and fifteen were completed under pressure: the same profile we saw in possession, compressed into the first second after the ball is won.

Where those forward passes go

Staying with that moment, we used the MCP to identify who received each forward pass Koné completed straight after a recovery.

Of the 41 completed forward passes he plays immediately after winning the ball, 32 (78%) break a line. 17 go to Roma’s creative players, Dybala (6), Pellegrini (6) and Soulé (5), and almost all of them take at least one opponent out of the game.

The other detail is the centre-forwards. Malen, Ferguson and Dovbyk receive just 3% of all Koné’s completed passes, but 17% of these forward passes after a recovery, and six of the seven break a line. In settled possession he rarely plays straight into the striker; in transition, with the opponent still unbalanced, he looks for him at once.

Summary

Koné’s 2025-26 season shows a midfielder whose value lies less in volume than in how and where he makes himself useful.

• In possession: a connector on the left of Roma’s midfield. He offers the side-on angle for teammates, receives under pressure and finds passes through the lines.

  
  

• Out of possession: not a presser or an interceptor, but a player who anticipates loose balls, with 28% more middle-third recoveries and 15% more second balls won than the average Serie A central midfielder.

  
  

• After winning the ball: he plays the next pass quickly and often forward (56%). 78% of those forward passes break a line, mostly towards Dybala, Pellegrini, Soulé and the striker.

  
  

• How he has evolved: from the combination-heavy pivot of 2024-25, built on one-twos and third-man patterns, to a player who breaks lines on his own and adapts his priorities to the score.