French media deliver verdict on Bradley Barcola playing as a striker vs Italy

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Barcola has been tested as a central striker by Andoni Iraola already this season, playing ineffectively through the middle as Liverpool lost against Fenerbahce in the Champions League.Despite his disappointing display in Turkey, Zinedine Zidane decided that the 24-year-old was the right choice in their Nations League clash with Italy, and though the French were beaten 3-1, national media have declared that the Barcola experiment showed some encouraging signs. Although the match in Milan went badly for them, Foot Mercato seem to think the Liverpool man could be a fit centrally, and after handing many of his teammates scores of 4/10 or worse for Thursday’s game, they decided on a 5/10 for Barcola, declaring that he showed ‘flashes of promise’ in an ‘unusual’ position.

RMC Sport were encouraged by Barcola’s performance as well, also scoring him as a 5/10 – which was higher than every French player barring Michael Olise, Lucas Da Cunha and Jeremy Jacquet – claiming that he showed off his technical skills with some nice lay-offs. His lack of duel-winning is criticised (although Barcola won two out of three ground duels statistically), and it’s claimed that Barcola was less threatening after moving to the left in the second-half, but this appears to have been a step in the right direction for the £123m man.

Barcola was not the only Liverpool player on the pitch for France on Thursday, with Jacquet also cementing his place in the back line ahead of Ibrahima Konate, who sat out the 90 minutes on the bench. All in all, this was not a good day at the office for Zidane and France, but in Barcola and Jacquet, it sounds like Liverpool had two of their better performers in Milan.