Players

Breaking down Noah Nartey, the first of his Archetype

Introducing The Defuser - revealed by a new name in Danish midfield

Llew Davies

Llew Davies

— 8 min read
Graphic featuring images of Brondby and Denmark midfielders, Noah Nartey

I first watched Noah Nartey at the UEFA U-17 EURO in 2022. I can’t find my notes from that tournament, sadly – they’re in a notebook somewhere, back before we collated everything in the central SCOUTED database – but I remember him being an impressive little talent with an eye-catching skillset at the heart of Denmark’s midfield. I also remember that Stevie liked him as much as I did.

Fast forward three years and Nartey’s now playing at the UEFA U-21 EURO, impressing with his eye-catching skillset once again. This tournament comes on the back of his breakthrough season for Brøndby IF. The 2024/25 campaign saw him rack up almost 2,600 minutes in total, beginning and ending it as a regular starter. It was a big gear change from previous years where he only made a handful of substitute appearances, but one he handled with aplomb. Ask any Brøndby fan how he did and the vast majority will rave about him.

Ardent SCOUTED readers will remember Nartey was included in our Team to Watch for 2025 and that we added him to The Shortlist back in February. I felt like this summer, with a host of U-21 EURO performances to dissect, presented the perfect opportunity to add something more substantive, dive a little deeper, and soft-launch a brand-new Archetype.

So this week’s SCOUT NOTES is about Noah Nartey.

722/1000

Reaching 1,000 paid subscribers by the end of August would change the outlook of SCOUTED forever. It’s an enormously ambitious goal, but such are the heights we must reach to be confident of survival. You can help us get there.

Find out more

Why is Noah Nartey good? Reason number one: because he is excellent under pressure.

Every time I’ve watched him – at club or international level – the 19-year-old is consistently great at being a release valve, or a ‘Defuser’, as we now call them at SCOUTED. He constantly flips perilous situations into advantageous ones for his teams. He turns pressure into positives.

💣
The Defuser is a work-in-progress SCOUTED Archetype, built primarily around press-resistance. Their superpower is the ability to evade and escape from pressure in build-up. They are the release valve, springing opposition traps and flipping scary situations into stable possession - or even an attack.

Here’s an example – after Denmark played the ball all the way back to their goalkeepers, France are latching on, squeezing high, and Nartey drops down to defuse the developing situation.

Read more