Ikhsan Fandi: The picture perfect Southeast Asian striker
Introducing Ikhsan Fandi
Ikhsan Fandi, son of the legendary Fandi Ahmad, is creating havoc on the Southeast Asian football. With his ability on bagging goals wherever he went, he seems to share the same football gene as his father. However, we all know that genes aren’t the sole determinant of humans’ personality and talents, and this applies to Ikhsan’s footballing ability, which was also shaped by his childhood experience, sacrifice, competitiveness, and a close-knit family.
Ikhsan was born in a football (and singing!) family, with all of his brothers, Irfan and Ilhan, playing football professionally. Surprisingly, although he grew up in a family full of future footballers, him and his siblings seemed to not really getting into football the way their football-crazed father was. However, Ikhsan often took note from his favorite strikers, most notably Robert Lewandowski, Karim Benzema, and Edinson Cavani.
Being the son of probably the greatest Southeast Asian striker of all time greatly benefits him, especially in terms of learning the fundamentals of the game. Fandi is known for his calm and meticulous approach on being a striker, and retained these habits while coaching his children. Ikhsan remarked that his father often repeated the same things over and over again when analyzing his game, because the easiest ones are often the one that people tend to forget.
Practice doesn’t makes perfect. Practice correctly makes perfect. — Fandi Ahmad
Ikhsan grew up in a supportive and driven family, with him and his siblings pushing each other to take their game to the next level. With his mentality already shaped on his formative years, Ikhsan spent two years overseas (respectively Spain and Chile), before competing professionally in the Singaporean Premier League.
After two years of football in Singapore, which often got interrupted by the obligatory National Service, Ikhsan took a step further by taking a trial in Norway, impressing the newly promoted Norwegian First Division club, Raufoss IL. After a series of decent performances, IK Start, a Norwegian Premier League club, was interested in Ikhsan and offered him a three-day trial.
Things went smoothly, until COVID happened. Ikhsan only played in one match (out of three), was scoring a goal on that game, until it was concluded that he wouldn’t play on Start due to salary and contract problems. He instead got transferred into FK Jerv, another club at the First Division. After 36 league appearances, 7 goals, and a promotion to the Eliteserien as the icing of the cake, Ikhsan decided that he needs a new challenge. Bangkok Glass (BG) Pathum United, the Thai League powerhouse, secured Ikhsan’s transfer for 2 million baht, once again reuniting him with Irfan, and teaming up with the legendary Teerasil Dangda.
As for now, Ikhsan has proven that he’s capable to play at the most competitive league in Southeast Asia. He have scored 8 goals in 14 matches in the league (and had scored 5in a match), while scoring a brace in an AFC Champions League match. His road to be the top Southeast Asian striker is written in the stars.
Profiling Ikhsan
Ikhsan is a tall, strong player with a dynamo-like acceleration and great balance. This makes him very dangerous when running off the opposing defenders’ shoulders, posing a threat aerially, and not easily being toppled by the opposing defenders. These aspects partly makes his jump to the more physical Norwegian League much easier, and he even scored with an header there.
However, Ikhsan still have room to improve his balance when faced with ground duels. He still got toppled by opposing CBs like this:
Ikhsan have a good feel on turning, changing directions, or orientating his body to adjust his shot power and trajectory. This makes him able to adapt to various phases of play simultaneously, like continuing from wide rotations to a crossing option on far post. As an example, he adjusted his run two times to beat the offside trap.
He is pretty versatile on receiving the ball, sometimes receiving with his outer foot, inner foot, or with his feet in the same height as his thigh. Notice that he have some tendency to knock the ball to his teammate if the ball is to wild for him to control.
Hence, he seems to have weaknesses on receiving long balls or unpredictable bounces, that is probably related to his anticipation to the trajectory of the ball. Although he sometimes could adapt to his imperfect touch, this weaknesses could be exposed when facing a more disciplined and physical team.
As you could see on the YouTube video by Golden Videos, Ikhsan is also confident and having good composure when shooting the ball. He could hit it hard to the top bins, but also could execute a coolheaded low shot to the corner.
He also could dribble with his head scanning the field. This, combined with his good close control creates some hard time for the opponents to contain him. You could see the example on the YouTube video or the Twitter post right after the next paragraph.
Ikhsan is not a player who would constantly be the extra man on the midfield. He’s more to a player who would assist the attack by moving out wide, receiving a defense-splitting pass with intention to ping it to the nearest man, or playing one-twos with his teammates, like both of these examples:
Opposing defenders should constantly be aware of Ikhsan’s predatory instincts. He could instantly notice gaps left by them and effectively exploiting it. As previously stated before, he could adjust his run according to the situation on the pitch. On this example, Ikhsan first did an arching run to the left. After noticing that his teammate went to the left side of the pitch, he then goes to the far post and occupied the left-sided CB.
Ikhsan scans and anticipate on how the gap would be opened. In this picture, he first make a diagonal run in between the left-sided and the right-sided CB. Then, his teammate goes right, thereby attracting the left-sided CB and opened the right side. Ikhsan saw the dribble and instantly changed his run in behind the space behind the left-sided CB.
He also could utilize his off-ball movement to create imbalance on the opponents’ defensive unit. If a player man-marked Ikhsan, he would make himself as a visible option, a decoy run that in turn created spaces for his teammate. This also highlighted his good awareness of the situation around him.
Straight run, arching run, you name it, Ikhsan will do it. It’s often striking that because of his knowledge of various in-game situations, his run often greatly benefited his teammates. For instance, him doing an arching run stretches the opponents’ defence, creating spaces for his teammates for dribbling or making runs in behind.
Alongside that, his ability on creating separation allows him to evade defenders and create space for himself. This movement could differentiate between a consistent goal-scorer and a streaky one.
Ikhsan is pretty decent on defending. He’s able to close spaces by his large stature, as well as jockeying to further impose his territorial advantage and giving control to his movement. When he pressed the opponent, he consistently does it in a correct way, closing the dangerous spaces and forcing the opponents to play through the pressing triggers.
He also occasionally shown good defensive anticipation, like this one when he read a misplaced pass and stole the ball.
A potential drawback is that his large stature could also hinder him on dynamically changing directions while defending large spaces. It wouldn’t be a major issue, however, knowing Ikhsan’s good footwork and BG Pathum’s defensive cohesiveness.
By the data
The lack of advanced data in Southeast Asian football means that we couldn’t get a clearer interpretation on how Ikhsan plays based on the numbers. The best we could have is the AFC Champions League data in Sofascore (with a very small sample). However, there is an interesting data that we can use.
This is the heat map of Ikhsan’s 3 AFC Champions League matches. His versatility on attacking situations are highlighted here:
Conclusion
Ikhsan Fandi is one of the best — if not the best — Southeast Asian strikers right now. He has it all as an attacker, while also being pretty useful on defending. There are some rough edges here and there, but I believe that he could fix this in the future.
