Idrissa Gueye, the 19-year-old Udinese forward, heads into the final stretch of pre-season with a clearer picture of the squad around him after Nicolò Zaniolo signed a contract extension with the Friulani through 2029, resolving a weeks-long salary dispute that had cast uncertainty over the club's attacking structure.
The timing matters for Gueye specifically. A teenager still building his foothold in Serie A, he finished the 2025-26 season with one goal and no assists across 18 appearances, carrying an average match rating of 6.50. Those numbers are modest, but they belong to a player who has already demonstrated he can hold a place in a top-flight squad at an age when most forwards are still navigating the third tier. The question was always whether the environment around him would allow genuine development — and a settled, experienced presence like Zaniolo in the same attacking unit sharpens that question considerably.
Udinese under Kosta Runjaić finished tenth in Serie A with 50 points from 37 matches, a record of 14 wins, eight draws, and 15 defeats. The side scored 45 goals and conceded 47 — a team that competed without ever threatening the upper half, functional rather than fluid. Gueye's role within that structure was limited but real, and his AI overall score of 75 out of 100, with a projected ceiling of 82, suggests the underlying profile of a player who has not yet been asked to do everything he is capable of.
Zaniolo's renewal does not automatically expand Gueye's minutes. It could, in fact, compress them. A trequartista who has now committed his medium-term future to the club will expect to be central to Runjaić's plans, and the Udinese coach will have to manage an attacking group with more depth and more competing claims than last season. For Gueye, that means pre-season performance carries genuine weight — not as a formality, but as an audition conducted in full view of a coaching staff deciding how to distribute responsibility.
His pre-season involvement has already offered early evidence. He scored in the opening summer friendly against Istra, contributing to a comeback from two goals down. The goal itself is a data point, not a verdict, but it confirms he is in contention rather than on the periphery.
At 19, with a full Serie A season behind him and a squad now stabilised around a renewed core, Gueye enters 2026-27 with more context than he had twelve months ago — and the gap between his current output and his projected ceiling is precisely the space that the next campaign will begin to close.