A comprehensive guide to Archetypes
Plus: Said El Mala and Clement Bischoff announce themselves
This is The Shortlist, your free weekly dispatch of short-form stories from the editorial team at SCOUTED: Tom Curren, Jake Entwistle and Llew Davies.
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Your guide to Archetypes
It's finally happened. After much cajoling, crying, threats of violence and three actual fistfights, Jake has finally collated a full and comprehensive guide to Archetypes.
The primary function of this week's Shortlist is just to point you in the guide's direction, so I won't beat around the bush: here it is.
SCOUTED
If you're unfamiliar with the Archetypes project and would like to familiarise yourself with Jake's thinking, or would just like a reminder of the difference between a Platformer and a Diffuser, the guide above has you covered. Jump in, have fun, nerd out.
An advert generated by AI
I'm a longtime admirer and reader of 404 Media, who this week ran a story about how Meta's AI personalised adverts generator is filling your feeds with absolute garbage that's unfortunately as successful as it is annoying.
We've been experimenting with Meta ads recently to disastrous results, perhaps because we chose to use human-made creative rather than slop. I will never surrender. If you're not subscribed to SCOUTED yet, here's why you should, as written by me, a very tired man:
Below's Heatwatch features four players who are all, in their own ways, lighting up the burgeoning season. They've all been catapulted into stardom just weeks after we brought them to your attention in SCOUTED50. And two have been featured in extremely detailed, play-by-play breakdowns by Llew in the past month.
Jake and Llew are just really good at this, and they're not robots, and they work incredibly hard. Subscribing and reading SCOUTED is the best way to stay ahead of the game, but also to keep the lights on at our magazine, where every word is written by hand, even when we're really exhausted and pressing 'generate' would be much easier.
Please help out three tired humans below - and read on for Heatwatch.
HEATWATCH
SCOUTED50: Keeping tabs on the golden boys.
🔥 41 / Said El Mala
Not even we expected this. Everything that made Said El Mala stand out at the UEFA U-19 EURO has translated immediately to senior level. So much so that he’s been called up to the senior national side after just 340 minutes of Bundesliga football. He’s made seven appearances in total and despite starting just twice, he’s scored four goals and provided an assist. El Mala is bursting into flames and it doesn’t look like anyone can put him out.
Llew Davies
🔥 27 / Givairo Read
Ahead of the UEFA Europa League match against Stuttgart, Givairo Read had scored or assisted in three consecutive games. The Feyenoord scored against Panathinaikos before assisting in the 3-2 defeat to PSV and the 3-1 win against Volendam.
This eye-catching form has reportedly attracted interest from Liverpool, Chelsea and FC Bayern. But don’t be surprised if they have been keeping tabs since the U-19 EURO at least. Upon adding him to our Team of the Tournament, Llew wrote:
‘Electric’ is one of the words we used to describe his skillset. He’s like a mix of Jeremie Frimpong and Jurriën Timber: he moves similarly to the former but is built more like the latter.
Given Timber’s growing reputation as one of the very best full-backs in Europe, the line of teams queuing up for Read is only going to get longer.
Llew Davies
🔥 26 / Clement Bischoff
I’m the only one doing it, but I call Clement Bischoff the Cerebral Assassin. Partly because of the smoothness of his actions. Everything is calm, collected and calculated. But mainly because of his razor sharp intelligence. His first-time finish was indeed flawless.
Clement Bischoff with a flawless first time finish 💫 pic.twitter.com/G2CL9EYF14
— FC Red Bull Salzburg EN (@FCRBS_en) November 3, 2025
Amidst the chaos of a chain of second balls, Bischoff steps into the ball with serene composures and strokes it into the bottom corner. This is in the first minute of the game.
The Dane later provided an assist by tip-toeing into the box before a deft reverse pass teed up Sōta Kitano to finish first-time on the overlap. Bischoff’s appreciation and awareness of space is a delight.
🔥 12 / Mohamed Kader Meïté
This kid is a joke. 25% of the goals Strasbourg have conceded this season were scored by Rennes in their 4-1 win. Mohamed Kader Meïté scored one and assisted another all while ragdolling another SCOUTED favourite, Lucas Høgsberg.
Rather than try to explain it, just enjoy these five clips packaged into 60 seconds of dominant centre-forward play:
If you do want to read even more about him, Llew has got you covered.
Llew Davies
That’s all, folks. See you next Friday.
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