Matias Soulé is making the most of his Frosinone loan spell thus far

As I sat and watched the opening minutes of the local college’s game Sunday afternoon, I looked down and saw that I had a text from my best Juventus fan friend and he had recommendation for me upon my return home.

“If you haven’t already, watch the Frosinone vs. Hellas Verona highlights.”

Seeing as I wasn’t home, the follow-up text certainly provided the necessary context.

“Matias Soulé was doing whatever the F he wanted all game long.”

Ahhhhh. There we go. There’s a good reason to check out some Frosinone highlights on the second Sunday of October. Those highlights look a little something like this ...

You see those highlights? Yeah, those are good. Those are very promising, and the kind of performance in which Soulé is not just in one or two of Frosinone’s passages of play, but at the center of a whole lot of things that his new club was able to do in their 2-1 win over Hellas Verona on Sunday.

Within the first 34 minutes, Soulé did the following:

• Free kick just over the crossbar
• Left-footed shot from the top of the box just over the crossbar.
• Weaving run through the Hellas Verona defense ends with another left-footed shot going off the left post.

He wasn’t done there, folks.

• In the 61st minute, he hit the near post on a shot he’d probably tell you he should have scored pretty easily.
• Five minutes later, he scored his second goal of the 2023-24 season with a great run from the top of the box to go totally unmarked and head a cross home. As a cherry on top, he was the one who started the whole movement with some nice combination play out wide on the right.

For those of you who might be saying something along the lines of “Well, it’s only Hellas Verona, so that’s not a big deal at all” let me tell you this: Hellas Verona entered Sunday’s game with Frosinone as, by the numbers, one of the best defenses in the league. Now, we probably don’t think that will continue seeing as they’ve yet to play so many of Italy’s big clubs, but allowing six goals through your first seven games is nothing to scoff at.

And Soulé not only nearly had a hat trick, but also just ran wild on the Hellas backline all day long.

For somebody getting their first chance at regular playing time in Serie A, Soulé has done exactly what the Juventus front office probably wanted to see when they agreed to send him out on loan. saw Soulé in small bursts last season, games where he showed his potential but also somebody who was still very much a teenager who has something to learn at this kind of level. Now, a few months after turning 20, Soulé has turned in a true man of the match performance and scored the game-winning goal for his newly-promoted side to earn them three oh-so-valuable points.

As we sit here at the October international break, Frosinone — which finished atop the Serie B table under the direction of Fabio Grosso a year ago to earn promotion — sits in eighth place in the table. (Yeah, yeah, yeah ... Max Allegri doesn’t want us looking at the table just yet, but let’s just go ahead and do it regardless of what he says.)

Soulé is proving to be a big reason why.

In five of his six starts since arriving on his season-long loan, Frosinone has gotten at least a point. His first goal of the season, a 70th-minute header (!!), allowed Frosinone to get a draw with Fiorentina last month. For a newly-promoted side that is always going to have survival as its No. 1 priority, getting a point (or points) in nearly every game of a six-game stretch is huge when it comes to them staying up in Serie A. And to be higher in the table than Roma and Lazio through the season’s first eight games? That’s massive.

Soulé has gotten the consistent playing time he needs to try and curate that talent he has into something that could help Juventus down the road. That is why a loan move made so much sense for him at his age, with a second season of what happened playing-time wise last year being something that would truly hurt his development. Instead, going to Frosinone — with a couple of other Juve youngsters on top of it — has proven to be exactly what he needed to develop and start to truly grow as a player.

The sample size may still be small, but Soulé has taken this opportunity and could very well be running with it at full steam ahead. And if he continues to do just that, then there’s going to be plenty more Frosinone highlights to watch most weekends.