Dani Queipo is a 20-year-old left-wing or attacking midfielder who plays at Real Sporting de Gijón from Liga SmartBank (Second Spanish division). Born in Oviedo, he joined the lower categories of Sporting at the U11 age and debuted in 2020 with the reserve team. From there, thanks to his good season on 21/22 with the reserves and his preseason games, Queipo achieved a place (having many minutes) in the first team and in recent days he has renewed until 2027.
Queipo, standing at 168 centimetres tall with a lean build, is an agile and elusive winger. Despite not being too fast, he does not shy away from the 1V1, although he looks more comfortable playing between the lines and waiting for the arrival of the left-back to combine with him. With the ability to keep the ball close to the foot, Queipo is located in 45th place in terms of more dribbles (among midfielders and strikers), and 22nd with more success (50%) among those who completed more than 10 dribbles. In addition, he has a great capacity to strain balls between the defence in search of the offensive reference, averaging 0.75 key passes per encounter. Despite demonstrating great offensive capacity in the B-team (9 goals) starting from the wing and shooting from outside of the area, this season in professional football he is not so loose when looking for the goal. Although he could not score any goal or give any assist so far this year, Queipo generates a sensation of danger as it is difficult to foresee his future movements when he gets the ball.
As mentioned above, Queipo is a player who physically does not yet give the impression of being ready for professional football -without taking into account his technical quality- due to the feeling of fragility that produces to see such a small body fighting against defenders of much greater size. Accordingly, he generates many fouls in dangerous areas since he is easily brought to the ground. It is quite accurate to think that he would need to take the leap in the physical aspect since, in addition to that lack of strength, he is regularly fatigued after 60 minutes and is almost always one of the first substitutions of the match.
In transition and defensive phases, Queipo is perhaps more involved than he should be. Due to his impetus combined with his inexperience, he takes on roles that do not correspond to him, going to press opponents far from his area of action and leaving the team unbalanced, making unnecessary fouls or directly delaying his position to that of a left-back. However, this type of action also sometimes has beneficial repercussions, leading to counter-attacks and key defensive movements at specific moments. Statistically, Queipo per game: intercepts 0.5 balls, completes 1.6 tackles, wins 3.7 duels (49% success rate), clears 0.4 balls and recovers 0.2 balls in the opposition half, although, on the other hand, he commits more fouls than he receives (1.1 vs. 0.8). Overall, very good numbers considering his demarcation and age, although perhaps by focusing more on the offensive aspects he could start to dazzle in the attacking zone more than he has done so far and would have more energy in the final stages of the game by freeing himself from that extra burden.
In conclusion, Dani Queipo is one of the great promises of the category that still has to take the last step to finish exploding in the elite. After his well-deserved long-term renewal, within the youth project that Sporting always likes to have, it is time for him to establish himself in the starting eleven and have a more significant influence on the game. Undoubtedly, he has the potential to become a key player for the club, whose main aspiration is to achieve promotion in the coming seasons. Even without youth internationals, it would not be unreasonable to think that Luis de la Fuente could call him up for the U-21 in the next few games.
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