Breaking down Kees Smit

It’s a Thursday night in November. At Selhurst Park, an in-form Crystal Palace and a vibrant AZ Alkmaar side duel to a boisterous south London soundtrack. Football doesn’t get much more atmospheric than this.

Tonight, young Kees Smit will find the biggest stage of his fledgling career.

The game was high tempo from the off. As anyone who has watched Smit - or read our UEFA U-19 EURO coverage - will know, high tempo is the 19-year-old’s resting state. 

SCOUTED XI: Our UEFA U-19 EURO Team of the Tournament

Our standout performers from the 2025 Men’s UEFA U-19 European Championship in Romania

SCOUTEDLlew Davies

He’s a great tempo player because he moves, constantly. He isn’t a midfielder that holds position, waiting for the ball to reach him: he drops, slides and bursts towards it in every phase of play. He rolls underneath, pops up between lines, slips to the outside and breaks ahead of play, sometimes all in the same sequence.

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This movement is facilitated by constant scanning. Smit’s head is constantly swivelling, reading the space around him. Here he is one minute into the game at Selhurst Park, rolling deep to provide his left-back an option:

I counted four scans – two of either shoulder, sharp glances either side – in three seconds before he takes the ball on his front foot, steps on, then slips it through for AZ to break forward.

A little over a minute later, Smit is on the other side of the pitch, helping AZ build another attack. This time he pounces on a loose ball and smacks a well-executed switch out to the opposite wing, where Ibrahim Sadiq is in a one-v-one situation.

He’s quick to attack the box from there, and even quicker to support underneath when he realises the crossing opportunity has gone. It ends with him cracking a first-time shot from the edge of the box that Dean Henderson deals with fairly comfortably.