Haissem Hassan Benchmarking

A fast tricky winger coming off a World Cup being signed by Celtic - what’s not to like?!

As is generally the case, as we ascend the scale for cost, player qualities tend to be pretty obvious. For example, Arne Engels’ tracking data will have been easily obtainable by clubs and his running at Augsburg well known. Similarly, a winger playing in La Liga will not be lacking in clubs with volumes of data available to make an assessment.

But let’s begin this analysis a season before last, when Haissem Hassan’s Real Oviedo side earned promotion from Segunda Division up to La Liga for 2025-2026:

For this exercise, I have included Hassan’s teammate Ilyas Chaira for contextual purposes. Hassan played mostly as a wide right attacker and Chaira as his left sided counterpart.

While earning promotion, Real Oviedo did not play a style that is analogous to how Celtic have played in recent seasons. They had about 52% possession, were not particularly aggressive in their pressing, and went long/direct at about double the rate Celtic have typically. These are not negatives - just context.

We see from the first batch of metrics that Hassan was VERY direct with his passing when he did pass forward. He was also very effective when it came to creating chances for his teammates, both in volume and average quality. Chaira, in contrast, was more of a recipient of chances vs someone who created, on a relative basis.

This second section speaks directly to where Hassan stands out, which is to say he appears quite “fast twitchy” - i.e. quick, fast, and enjoys running with the ball and taking on defenders 1 vs 1 via dribbles. At the Segunda Division level within the competitive dynamics at Real Oviedo, he was a dominant force in that regard. He appears to have not done a lot of defending or effective competing in the air.