Player Watch Player Watch: Radu Dragusin

Radu Dragusin: What Tottenham can expect from their new centre-back
Charlie Eccleshare
Watching Radu Dragusin in action, it’s the focus, the technique, the will to succeed that strikes you.

The action in question is actually Dragusin solving a Rubik’s Cube in 45 seconds, one of his favourite pastimes. A smart guy who already speaks good English, Dragusin started doing Rubik’s Cubes with a friend as a youngster and then got hooked.

He’s said to be a very dedicated, very professional person, and it bodes well that this is one of his biggest off-field vices.

Dragusin is similarly intelligent on the pitch; a quick learner who likes hearing about different systems and getting to grips with different technical and tactical demands.

These will be important skills for him to put into practice at his new club Tottenham Hotspur, as he joins one of the most possession-dominant teams in the Premier League from Genoa, the team with the second-lowest average possession in Serie A this season. Genoa also have one of the least aggressive presses in the division; Spurs have the second-most aggressive press in the Premier League.

His career so far suggests Dragusin will be able to adapt — having jumped from system to system throughout the early part of his career, which took him from a Champions League debut with Juventus as an 18-year-old to loans at Sampdoria, Salernitana and then a spell in Serie B with Genoa last season.

Now after promotion and an impressive first half of this campaign with Genoa, Dragusin is a Spurs player after they fended off interest from Bayern Munich. It’s been some rise — and one that speaks to his determination and strong-mindedness. It wasn’t long ago that he couldn’t get into the Romania under-21 side (now he’ll start for the senior team at Euro 2024) and leaving Juventus permanently this summer aged 21 after three loans reflected his desire to play regularly, even if it meant taking a step down.

The desire to play more is said to be part of the reason he opted for Spurs over Bayern; the nature of the German club might have meant fewer minutes than he’ll get at Spurs. Ange Postecoglou has shown again and again throughout his career that youth and inexperience are no barriers to playing regularly for him.

“Radu is very professional, smart, with a great mentality and desire to prove himself,” says Romanian journalist Emanuel Rosu, who has known the defender for several years. “What he has done in the last year and a half is amazing.”

Dragusin’s presence will be felt straight away at Hotspur Way: he is imposing physically and stands at 6ft 3in (191cm). With his ponytail and beard combo, he looks like he could be a Dothraki warrior from Game of Thrones. His nickname at Genoa was “The Bodyguard”.

As for his background, Dragusin, a 21-year-old from Bucharest, comes from a family with a sporting pedigree. His parents have both represented Romania at the Olympics: his dad, Dan, at volleyball, his mum, Svetlana, at basketball. His sister, Meira, was also a promising basketball player as a youngster.

Dragusin is close with his family, who are well-known (and well-respected) by Fabio Paratici. It was Paratici who brought a 16-year-old Dragusin to Juventus in 2018 amid interest from several top European clubs. This link meant Dragusin has been on Spurs’ radar for some time since Paratici joined Tottenham as managing director of football in the summer of 2021. Spurs looked at Dragusin that window, as did clubs like RB Leipzig, but Dragusin had recently signed a new contract at Juve and ended up going out on loan to Sampdoria.

By that point, Dragusin had already made a good impression at Juventus. He was seen as raw but with a huge amount of potential. Giorgio Chiellini was used as a reference point for someone who wasn’t especially polished as a youngster but maximised their talent and worked hard to keep developing. Chiellini himself was a big fan of the Romanian and joked that, with his rugged physicality, Dragusin looked like he had at the same age.


An 18-year-old Dragusin playing for Juventus under-23s in 2020 (Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images)
Dragusin was seen as one of Juventus’ best young defenders and he was given his Champions League and Serie A debuts in December 2020, aged 18. The then-Juventus manager Andrea Pirlo said of Dragusin that season: “He’s physically very strong. He’s very young and must develop on a technical level, but he will have time to do it, training every day with great champions.”

Juve loaned Dragusin to fellow Serie A side Sampdoria in August 2021, but after making 13 league appearances in the first half of the season, he ended up spending the rest of the campaign at Salernitana, also in the Italian top flight. He only played seven times for the Salerno club but was part of the squad that pulled off a dramatic escape from relegation having spent the majority of the season at the bottom of the table.

It was the following season, though, that Dragusin really kicked on and he did so having dropped down a division to Serie B — joining Sampdoria’s city rivals Genoa on loan. Juve would have happily kept him on as cover, but Dragusin was determined to play regularly.

He ended up playing every game of Genoa’s promotion-winning campaign (appearing in more regular-season minutes than any other outfield player in the division) and was a key player in the heart of the team’s defence. Dragusin showed he had developed the bite in his tackles that some in the Romanian FA thought he had been lacking and he made a big impression at Genoa with his winning mentality and high-quality attitude.

One story that sums this up comes from towards the end of last season. Genoa had already secured promotion and were running through a kick-off routine during training. It involved the ball being passed back to Dragusin and him launching a diagonal pass to a winger who would knock the ball down for one of the attackers to have a shot on goal. The mood was light given Genoa were already promoted and the attacker casually took the shot before everyone returned to their positions.

Not Dragusin. He angrily confronted the attacker, who was a senior player, and told him to take the session seriously. It didn’t matter that Genoa had already secured promotion or that this was an experienced, well-respected member of the squad, there were standards to uphold.

It’s an incident that gives an insight into Dragusin’s mentality and is the sort of thing that will go down very well with Postecoglou, who has similarly exacting standards.

The Genoa coaches also loved this approach, as well as how inquisitive Dragusin was. They worked with him on his positioning and the tactical side of the game through individual analysis sessions. He was clearly very strong, but there were a few things that needed improving — such as his distribution, which remains a work in progress. He was largely playing as a right-footer on the left side of central defence, which could be challenging from a distribution perspective but now means he can play on either side or in the middle of a three if needed.

He’s played most of his career in a back three and during this season we can see from the below graphic that he’s been used fairly regularly in all three of the centre-back roles. In his previous six games, for instance, he has played in all three and can therefore be comfortably considered the backup to both Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven.

Dragusin has also played as a right-back while at Sampdoria and Salernitana and this kind of versatility and “multi-functionality”, as Postecoglou calls it, is something the Spurs head coach wants from his players. It’s especially valuable in a squad that so far under him has been riddled with injuries.



This season has been Dragusin’s first as a permanent Genoa player having joined permanently in the summer for just over £4.3million ($5.5m) plus add-ons. There is already regret at Juventus that he was allowed to go for so little and some at the club would be forgiven for looking at him and fellow Juve old boys at Spurs (Romero, Dejan Kulusevski and Rodrigo Bentancur) with a sense of what might have been. Dragusin also knows the trio from his time at Juventus and that should help him settle in at Tottenham.

After playing every league game of last season, Dragusin has repeated the trick this campaign, helping Genoa to mid-table in Serie A. It’s a level of durability that will be appreciated — and no doubt tested — at his new club.

To get a sense of the kind of defender he is, we can use smarterscout data, which measures an individual’s ability in specific metrics out of 99 relative to other players in their position. (For a guide on how to understand smarterscout, click here.)



Looking at his numbers from this season, the standout metric is the 86 out of 99 defending impact, which smarterscout defines as: “The impact of a player’s defending towards the opposition progressing the ball. The higher the number, the more the player forces turnovers or limits ball progression when they are the assigned defender per smarterscout’s algorithm.

This suggests that he’s a strong defender who makes big challenges when required, but low scores on defensive intensity and recoveries and interceptions tell us he isn’t snapping into challenges very often (surely a positive given he’ll be playing alongside Romero at times). This is supported by the fact that he has been successful in 88.9 per cent of the dribbles he’s faced in 2023-24, only being dribbled past once all season. Dragusin has only been booked once — another attribute that will be appreciated and tested at Spurs.

In the example below from December, Inter Milan’s Marcus Thuram fancies his chances to run at Dragusin and into the box.



Dragusin holds his position…



… then casually flicks a leg out to knock the ball away to a team-mate.

The next example comes from October’s 2-0 defeat at Atalanta.



In this instance, Ademola Lookman has a head start on Dragusin and heads into the penalty area.



Dragusin manages to make up the yards and makes a perfectly timed tackle to give away a corner rather than a penalty.

Dragusin also ranks well in the air, winning the third-most aerial duels in Serie A this season, alongside a win rate of 69.9 per cent. He puts this to good use in the opposition box and has scored twice this season to add to the four he got in the previous campaign. His manager, Alberto Gilardino, was a striker in Italy’s 2006 World Cup-winning squad and has encouraged Dragusin to get forward as much as possible.

You can see why when he can score headers like the one below last season against Perugia — a ludicrously powerful effort given how far out he is and the fact he barely jumps.





Figures of 72 out of 99 for receptions in the opposition box and 87 out of 99 for shot volume underline how active he is in an attacking sense. Again, this is something that will be encouraged by Postecoglou, who wants Tottenham to dominate and play in the opposition half.

There are areas, though, that Dragusin will have to adapt. As mentioned previously, he is coming from a team that largely cede possession and doesn’t press very much. But Spurs won’t be too worried about this — it was a similar story with Guglielmo Vicario who, as The Athletic explained when he joined, arrived in north London having played for a team in Empoli that meant he largely stayed on his line. Now he is the Premier League’s second-most active sweeper keeper and looks completely natural in that role.

Dragusin will hopefully be able to make a similar conversion and it’s worth remembering that in Serie B last season, Genoa tended to dominate the ball as Spurs do. So much so that, per Opta, Dragusin was third in the division for successful passes and passes in his own half and fifth for carries of more than five metres that are followed with a pass.

Perhaps expected from a team that has been promoted, this season in Serie A has been different for Genoa — and Dragusin has at times looked a little agricultural. He has made the second-most clearances in the division (87) and his passing can be a bit hurried and erratic.

Playing for Spurs — a team with more control of the ball — should provide greater scope for him to play like the defender he has previously said he admires: Virgil van Dijk.

But where Van Dijk looks like he’s gliding along the pitch, Dragusin is more intense, more physical. He likes to battle with opposition strikers and has got better at knowing when to engage in duels. He’s quick, too, so can recover on the rare occasions opposition players get the better of him.


Dragusin celebrates promotion to Serie A with Genoa last May (Simone Arveda/Getty Images)
All of these attributes showed up in Spurs’ reports on the player and there is confidence that, with all the raw materials in place, Dragusin can thrive under Postecoglou. Perhaps, as with Chiellini, his work rate means he will keep getting better and better.

Gilardino was desperate to keep Dragusin, but ultimately a fee of in excess of £25.8million was too good an offer for Genoa to turn down.

For Dragusin, the chance to play regularly at Spurs for a manager who has made it clear he believes in him was a big draw in joining. Bayern was of course tempting but Dragusin knew there was a chance that he could be on the periphery of things, as he experienced at Juventus.

He’s ready for a bigger role at a big club and as he has shown already in his short career he is willing to make tough decisions that he believes are for the best. Dragusin is confident he can compete for a regular spot at Tottenham. Those who have seen him play regularly, such as Postecoglou, agree.

And it would take a brave man to say otherwise. Certainly to his face.

A good character off the pitch, Spurs have signed a warrior on it — and he can’t wait to get going.