A new Power Forward prospect emerges in Germany
Plus: Max Dowman scores goals again (yes, again), FC Midtjylland find an Mbuemo regen, Mastantuono breaks the internet
Happy Friday, scouts. Welcome to The Shortlist, your weekly download on football’s next generation.
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Headliners
The players we watched this week.
Dispatches from HQ
Updates from Tom, Llew, Jake and the team
Hey readers! We’re working on a few things in the background and we’d like to keep you in the loop. We’ll have a new Technical Area blog in the coming weeks with more detail. Keep scrolling for more football stuff if you’d rather!
- Last week was our best week in terms of new paid subscribers since we left Substack and went solo. Building our own website and leaving the relative safety of Substack’s network was a huge risk but things are slowly coming together - we’re breathing a big sigh of relief. Our MRR (monthly recurring revenue) is up 6% from last month and we now earn more from your subscriptions than we ever did with Substack (Ghost, our new platform, take 0%). We still have a long way to go but the early signs suggest the plan is a good one. Thank you so much. If you’re new around here, welcome!
- Speaking of thanks, last week a reader signed up at the Director of Football tier for the first time. We’ve reached out to offer our thanks personally, but wanted to drop a public shout of gratitude too. You know who you are, you wonderful person. And I guess this acts as a reminder that we offer higher tiers of membership for those of you who value our work more than you currently pay and have the disposable income to support it. We have received some advice to increase our prices to help ease our revenue pressures but, to be honest, I really want to keep our writing accessible to as many people as possible - those who can afford to pay more doing so helps keep our prices low for everyone, and continue to offer free subscriptions to readers on harder times. So please consider it if possible!
A few weeks ago, we asked for your feedback. We’re working behind-the-scenes on some small quality-of-life features to improve the reader experience in response, as well as some larger projects. Here’s what’s consuming our time:
- Small QOL: Adding a progress bar to help visualise how much reading time is left in an article.
- Small QOL: building a more robust search function (so when you search ‘Carlos Baleba’, every article that mentions ‘Carlos Baleba’ anywhere in the text will be featured).
- Larger project: custom player pages that collate all the work we’ve ever done on a player (so ‘Franco Mastantuono’ will have a dedicated page, summarising our thoughts on the player and pointing you towards all the work we’ve done on him). These player pages would be a curated selection of SCOUTED favourites, built and updated manually, and not a replacement for Transfermarkt or whatever.
- Larger project: custom filters for the above player pages (e.g. you can search for all 2006-born forwards we’ve featured) including tags like Archetype, position, nationality, year, etc.
- Larger project: publishing and unlocking the internal SCOUTED database, featuring all our detailed notes across hundreds of players, games and tournaments, for an additional monthly fee.
These projects are in the early stages of development, but we wanted to gather feedback to see how they’d land. To that end, we’re asking you to fill out another quick form. The response last time was incredible and massively valuable, so please consider taking ten minutes to help us out if you can! Thank you so much.
Short…listed:
A short recommendation.
After Aaron Zehnter last week, we’re adding another second tier player to your Shortlists.
Ligue 2 has been a hotbed of talent for as long as we can remember: loads of players have emerged from the French second division (and beneath) to become household names at the top end of the European game. Another that could follow a similar pathway is Lamine Cissé at SC Bastia.
After two seasons in the third tier with boyhood club AS Nancy, the 22-year-old made a leap of faith to Corsica last summer and has stuck the landing. His first full Ligue 2 season has been an eye-catching one: eight goals and two assists in just under 2,000 minutes so far, an impressive return for the winger in a middling Bastia side.
His skillset also catches the eye — he’s jinky first and foremost, both in movements and dribbles. He has the combination of athletic and technical talent to make defenders miss with sharp changes of pace and direction. But Cissé’s unique selling point is probably his ability to play both sides: left winger, right winger, even behind the striker, and he’s a capable shooter off both feet too. That flexibility provides plenty of options.
Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see how he develops physically. Could he fill into an Mbeumo-esque build? It’s a possibility. What will exacerbate such physical development is a move to a top-flight league, a move he is bound to make this coming summer. The Bundesliga would be where my money is.
HEATWATCH
SCOUTED50: Keeping tabs on the golden boys.
🔥 9 / FRANCO MASTANTUONO
As mentioned above, Mastantuono settled the Superclasico with a frankly disgusting free-kick this week, and his hype is reaching a critical mass; it was about time we rated him hot. Technical directors everywhere are scrambling together the funds to pry this kid out of South America and into waiting European arms - the only question remaining is who exactly will win the race.
🧊 25 / MATHIS AMOUGOU
A few weeks ago we took note of Mathis Amougou’s move to Chelsea, and our concerns about how it’d affect the trajectory of his career, despite the fact he’d been immediately included in Premier League matchday squads. Well…yeah. Prior to January, Amougou had played 864 minutes across all competitions (which was just Ligue 1, but still). Since joining Chelsea, he’s managed…27. He was given 15 in a 3-0 victory over Legia Warsaw, and 12 from the bench against Southampton. Chelsea fans, thoughts?
SCOUTED Stats
The stat leaders piquing Jake’s interest. For the detail, read Monday Night SCOUTED.
🤯 Against Mallorca, Pedri became the only player to record 15+ Shot-Creating Actions and 15+ Ball Recoveries in a single game of ANY competition on the Stathead database
😮💨 Dário Essugo recently became the fifth U23 player to make 5+ Tackles and 5+ Interceptions in a Big Five League match this season
⛺️ Lamine Yamal delivered an iconic individual display against Inter in midweek. Not only did he become the youngest semi-final goalscorer in UEFA Champions League history, but his 16 Touches in the Attacking Penalty Area is the most recorded in a UCL semi-final on the Stathead database (since 2017/18).
Watchlist
The players to keep an eye on – and where to find them.
🇨🇮 Amadou Koné (2005)
Ligue 1 — Friday, 2 May 2025, 19:45 BST
I first came across Amadou Koné when attempting to discover the next Mousa Dembélé. Koné was one of three players, alongside Ryan Gravenberch and Jude Bellingham, that matched the criteria.
Since then, he’s established himself as a first-team starter alongside fellow teenager, Valentin Atangana Edoa.
In fact, Reims are the only side this season to give four teenagers at least 45 minutes in midfield in a single game this season, doing so against Angers and then again versus Montpellier.
Come for Koné, stay for Edoa, Diakhon and Sangui.
🇧🇷 Rayan (2006)
Brasileirão — Sunday, 4 May 2025, 20:00 BST
The three players born in 2006 or later with the most minutes in the 2025 Brasileirão are all playing on the right-wing: Estêvão Willian (2007, Palmeiras), Lucas Ferreira (2006, São Paulo) and Rayan Vitor (2006, Vasco da Gama). Two of them are playing in the same match this weekend.
If Estêvão is a Ballerina built in the Lamine Yamal mould, Rayan is a Bulldozer. And he is much more a forward than a winger. In fact, Rayan has all the traits of a Power Forward. He is billed as 1.86m and has a sniper of a left foot. Unlike Estêvão, he rarely dribbles past opponent. Instead, Rayan fights his battles in the air.
Sunday should see two of Brazil’s brightest young talents showcase two contrasting wide profiles. That sounds like good fun to me.
Further reading
Stefanos Tzimas, remember the name
Just over a month ago, I said ‘if Stefanos Tzimas keeps up this sort of form, clubs will be queuing up to get him’. Guess what? Stefanos Tzimas has kept up that sort of form.
The 18-year-old Greek striker is doing really good things on loan at Nürnberg. He’s scoring goals – plenty of them, seven in his last eight league games to be exact – which is especially really good. His last two were basically carbon copies of each other, darting off a high line before dinking over the goalkeepers, but he’s shown a nice repertoire of finishes too.
One glimpse at his FBRef profile and your eyes will bulge out of their sockets as an awooga klaxon rings out. Again, Green Bar Scouting isn’t advised by myself or SCOUTED, but there are cases where it is acceptable and this is as clear-cut as they come. Tzimas ranks in the 90th percentile among positional peers in the 2. Bundesliga for…
- Non-penalty goals
- Non-penalty xG
- Shots (total and on target)
- Touches in the penalty area
- Touches in the attacking third
- Progressive carries
- Successful take-ons
That is a skillset of a game-changer. First and foremost, the shots. All the best strikers (get and) take shots. The whole point of a striker is to score goals, and to score goals you need to take shots, so taking shots is good. He took seven in a game against HSV last month. Then you have the carries and dribbles, the progressive traits that are a byproduct of his support striker role.
Llew Davies
That’s all, folks. See you next Friday.
For everything on the next generation, stay tuned to SCOUTED.
