Late April brought news that Tottenham Hotspur have secured the continued presence of Lucas Bergvall, with the young Swedish midfielder signing a new contract until 2031. The announcement pleased one astute Spurs watcher, who observed that Bergvall’s skillset suggested things about his development curve.
This intuitively feels right and, even if it’s not, press-resistance and turning upon receipt of the ball seem like rarer skills, especially in young midfielders. Spurs deserve credit for locating Bergvall, although he was winning serious game time at Djurgårdens before they signed him, and finding such players is often not so straightforward.
TransferLab Emerge
Fortunately, we now have TransferLab Emerge to help.
TransferLab Emerge harnesses our market-leading Goal Difference Added algorithm to assess the best Under 21 footballers in the world, including 33 new youth leagues, 568 youth teams, and some 15,000 new players. It also incorporates the 18,000+ players aged 21 and under playing senior football across 150 competitions globally, working with our existing team strength model, so all players across all levels are adjusted by team strength and age group. As players progress, and are called up to older, stronger teams, their scores adjust automatically.
So, let’s dig in and find some press-resistant midfielders. We’ve already shown how you can use TransferLab to create bespoke player profiles, including this look at possible Frenkie de Jong-like options.
Step 1: figure out which of the 50 or so metrics in the platform are relevant.
Step 2: sense test the results to see if we get the kind of players we are looking for.
Step 3: refine and review.
Now, we aren’t looking specifically for Bergvall-like players. Ideally, we’d want a little more defensively from our press-resistant 6/8 types, and we will also include some passing metrics . We’ve ended up selecting 14 metrics, mostly good proxies for press-resistance (carries, dribbles, carries followed by pass, dribble plus), but with some passing (especially those associated with transitional or progressive passing) and the kind of defending we would want from a player in that zone of the pitch.
The profile
Here is Bergvall’s profile, rated against Premier League central midfielders in the last 12 months, using the metrics we selected. As you can see, he stacks up superbly against Premier League midfielders of all ages for line-breaking carries, carries generally, and carries followed by a pass. His defensive work needs, well, work, and he’s not the most effective transitional passer, but for a 19-year-old, this is a hugely impressive profile for the kind of player to get you past the first line of the press and do something relatively sensible with the ball thereafter.
As we have said, Emerge shows all U21s, whether in senior or youth-level football, and so it is instructive to see which player comes out top among all central and defensive midfielders for this profile. This is often a good test to see whether our profile is giving the kind of player we want to find (step 2 of the process). The top three are: Warren Zaïre-Emery, João Neves, and Carlos Baleba. That tracks. Here’s Baleba’s profile, again compared to all Premier League midfielders over the last 12 months.
While not elite (90th percentile) among all PL midfielders for any metric except interceptions, he is 80th percentile plus for transitional passing, the defensive metrics, and 70th percentile plus for the carrying metrics. As an all-round midfielder of the press-resistant, transitionally adept, defensively solid type, Baleba (and the other two) are the right kind of player. Obviously, we’d like a little more in the carrying, but we can adjust and refine as we go from this base.
The benefit of using the Emerge platform is we can now find these players operating exclusively, or almost exclusively, in youth leagues. This means we can find players of real potential and pick them up, either on loan or for less, than players doing similar things at senior level.
Here’s a fine example: using this profile but looking at last season’s Premier League 2, a certain Arsenal defensive midfielder leaps out for elite levels of passing, dribbling, passes before progression, and dribble plus (successful dribbles plus the action immediately afterwards) compared to other PL2 midfielders. He’s not too shabby at a number of other things too and, indeed, you may have heard of Myles Lewis-Skelly, whose skillset has transitioned rather neatly to playing as an inverting full back for Arsenal this season.
The players
So let’s look at a few other players in some of the youth leagues we have access to.
Campionato Primavera: Troy Tomsa – 17-years-old – Sassuolo
While this league has a few players rated more highly at moment, including Riccardo Campedelli (Cesena) and Kevin Leone (Sassuolo), finding a 17-year-old scoring well is impressive, especially when they have been part of the Primavera-winning Sassuolo set up.
Tomsa (far right in the picture below) was born in England and has moved around a bit (Romania, Germany, and now Italy). Against other Primavera midfielders, albeit in a 600 minute-odd sample size, Tomsa is in the 80th percentile or higher for line-breaking carries, half-space carries, passes before progression, transition 1st pass quality, interceptions, and counterpressing recoveries. This is a hugely valuable set of skills, especially in a teenager, especially when he is league average or above for pretty much everything else.
Denmark U19 Ligaen: Marcus Ryberg – 19-years-old – Silkeborg
Denmark has a decent line in these players, with the hugely impressive Thomas Jørgensen signed by Viborg FF in the summer, Oscar Højlund at Frankfurt, and Noah Nartey at Brøndby all playing a good level of senior football.
Next off the line could be Ryberg, who also looks ready to step up to the first-team. His carrying is already elite for Superliga level, and one season in Denmark’s top tier will probably have clubs across the top level of Europe interested, especially given that much of the passing skill is there already too.
Bundesliga U19: Marvin Dills – 18-years-old – Eintracht Frankfurt
Dills (pictured in the header image) seems yet to nail down a position, although probably will end up as a sort of free 8. He was capped by Germany U18s in March and it’s not hard to see why, with elite levels for metrics across the board.
Interestingly, his weakest areas are transitional passing and counterpressing, so perhaps he will thrive in a more possession-heavy, less direct system that the one that Frankfurt currently affords.
Premier League 2: Jack Senga – 21-years-old – Reading FC
Lastly, we can look at PL2. There’s not a huge amount of talent in this league for this profile, possibly because the good players have already moved up to the senior level or out on loan to strong clubs. There are a few talents, though. Tall, athletic, and showing an excellent all-round ability, Reading’s Jack Senga has the tools to operate very effectively even now at a good level, for example MLS, a lower-end Championship club, or the top tier in a Scandinavian league. His defensive output needs work at that level, but Senga could develop into a game-breaking player in a top tier at secondary nation level or second tier in an elite nation.
The benefits of a scouting platform geared just towards youth players are clear – for clubs relying on player trading, either developing and assessing in-house to sell on (or play!) is key, while picking up undervalued, under-used players from youth leagues and giving them first team minutes is a fairly clear path to increasing player value (and picking up some quality for the present). There are plenty of other leagues to dig into as well – we just picked a few of the more interesting ones.
If you’d like to find out more about how TransferLab Emerge can help your club, get in touch.
Header image copyright IMAGO / Niklas Heiden
