Bursting onto the scene: how to discover emerging talent
Spot high-potential prospects before they hit the mainstream.
Micah Richards has popularised the concept of ‘bursting onto the scene’ to the point of parody. But being able to identify when it’s about to happen is an extremely valuable and hyper-competitive aspect of player discovery. Here’s how SkillCorner data can help you get ahead of the curve.
Tom Reynolds, first-team scout at Eintracht Frankfurt, highlighted an important point when appearing on the The Overlap Breakdown Podcast:
“Every club looks at the young players. Every time, we’re looking at the youngest player that’s made their debut. We’re not the only ones around the world that have done it. Every single club, especially through data as well - and social media! - we now know when Estêvão has made his debut. Everyone knows a 16-year-old has made their debut in Colombia or Brazil. Whereas before, it wasn’t that easy… now social media highlights it for us. Of course certain clubs have certain ways of highlighting that and getting alerts.”
That final process is what we want to investigate further. Specifically, which SkillCorner metrics can recruitment teams use to stay alert to a teenager about to burst onto the scene?
Richards was an academy graduate who immediately turned heads in part due to his sheer athleticism. He went on to win a Premier League title. Fast forward 20 years and these physical attributes still arrest attention; you could argue they have become even more important. So, a young player, especially a teenager, who has made an immediate impact at the elite level, should always set alarm bells ringing.
A contemporary example to consider is Carlos Baleba. 19 years old at the time, Baleba had played just 531 top-flight minutes before Brighton & Hove Albion signed him in a €30m deal. Should they sell him, they will demand at least triple that fee.
Baleba had been tracked by a host of European clubs before Lille plucked him from the École de Football des Brasseries du Cameroun. But the Seagulls needed to see just 10 hours of Big Five League football in order to take that risk. What alarm bells did Baleba set off?
Well, looking at Baleba’s physical output, he really did burst onto the scene. Specifically, the OTIP scene. In his SCOUTED50 profile powered by SkillCorner data, Stephen Ganavas described Baleba as a 'wrecking ball' - due to “the dominant athletic edge he can give their midfield in defensive transition”. He even highlighted specific “burst” metrics, a rather serendipitous nomenclature. Here’s how the teenage Baleba ranked for those burst metrics during his only full season in Ligue 1. He ranked first for four out of five. You can hear the sirens coming...
Since Steve’s piece, SkillCorner has introduced Explosive metrics. It makes complete sense to include these and double down on attempts to discover those elite bursts of athleticism. Now, looking at the 2024/25 Premier League season, Baleba dominated the burst OTIP metrics, new and old.
Baleba would have appeared as the most extreme of outliers based on his output and his age. Not every player will be able to scale to the highest level and become a €100 million midfielder; however, the teenage talents we are targeting through this method of player discovery should at the very least retain their value. Let’s discover some more.
Stephen Ganavas
The pool we will dive into is a collection of divisions at the centre of recent SCOUTED analysis pieces. We’ll keep Ligue 1, the League of Talents, given that is the scene upon which Baleba burst. Beyond that, we will be scouring the Belgian Pro League, the Austrian Bundesliga and the Danish Superliga, as they all have a complete 2024/25 season in the books.
First, let’s run the search for a midfielder in our new Archetype, highlighting players that were born in 2005 or later. Inspired by Steve's original nomenclature, I've called this Archetype Wrecking Ball.
Malick Yalcouyé is the first big outlier. He spent the 2024/25 season on loan at Sturm Graz from… Brighton. He set off SCOUTED alarm bells when making the switch from Cote d’Ivoire to Sweden at the start of 2024 due to his high-energy and prolific ball-winning and ball-carrying. A quick check on his Allsvensken numbers suggests he most likely triggered the Brighton alerts as well.
Ezechiel Banzuzi is the next big outlier on our plot. Unfortunately for other clubs, he sounded the Red Bull alarms in April; RB Leipzig announced the €16 million signing from Belgian Pro League side OH Leuven that month.
Between Yalcouyé and Banzuzi is Rabby Nzingoula. The RC Strasbourg midfielder spent the 2024/25 season on loan at relegated Montpellier. Expect his output to turn heads should he pick up Andrey Santos’ minutes in the Strasbourg pivot next season. Also expect his younger brother, Auxerre midfielder Rudy Matondo, to appear on the 2025/26 version of this plot. Below is a full breakdown of OTIP burst metrics for the 10 players born in 2005 or later that land in the 75th percentile and above for both PSV-99 and Sprints Per 30 OTIP.
Victor Froholdt is the subject of serious interest from Eintracht Frankfurt - Tom Reynolds’ alerts have been triggered. Yalcouyé, Valdemar Byskov Andreasen and Caleb Yirenkyi are the only players to rank in the 75th percentile and above for all seven metrics. 2005-born Byskov is a FC Midtjylland academy graduate that has already amassed 50 first-team appearances for his boyhood club.
Yirenkyi, however, is very much bursting onto the scene. Having only made his first start for FC Nordsjælland in late February, a month after his 19th birthday, he has ticked the same box as Yalcouyé; the intensity of every action strikes you when watching him and that is reflected in the data. The reward for his breakthrough was a senior international debut at the end of May. Sharks will be circling. The Right to Dream Academy has done it again.
When exploring the centre-back goldmine that is Brazil, we used similar burst metrics in an attempt to evaluate peak athletic capacity. Pairing PSV-99 with Explosive Accelerations P30 OTIP moves away from rampant Wrecking Ball Midfielders to Centre-backs that can consistently turn on the afterburners - Super Sweepers. Within the 75th percentile cross section of these metrics, three extremely exciting 2005+ prospects stand out. The biggest outlier? 2004-born Abdukodir Khusanov. As you know, he was snapped up by Manchester City in January.
Joane Gadou is a 2007-born PSG academy graduate who signed for Red Bull Salzburg for €10m at the start of 2024/25. Gadou made 21 Austrian Bundesliga appearances in what was his first-ever senior season, let alone top-flight. He ranks in the top 1% for PSV-99 and Top 5 PSV-99, as well as ranking in the top 10% within this Centre-back dataset for host of other metrics, as seen below. This Physical output from a 1.95m 18-year-old will be triggering alerts all across Europe. But as we saw with Banzuzi, Red Bull are a step ahead.
2005-born Emmanuel Kakou is an example of the excellent, global Belgian Pro League recruitment we highlighted in a previous SkillCorner article. Kakou was signed by Cercle Brugge from Référence Foot Académie (RFA) in the Cote d’Ivoire in January 2024 and made his top-flight debut in September later that year. In this dataset, he ranks first for High Speed Running Activity P30 OTIP, Sprints P30 OTIP and Sprinting Distance P30 OTIP. He also ranks in the top 1% for Explosive Accelerations to HSR and Explosive Accelerations to Sprint. Another that has well and truly burst onto the scene.
The final centre-back is Stade Rennais academy graduate Jérémy Jacquet. Upon returning to the club from a two-year loan spell with Clermont in January this year, the 2005er became an immediate starter and once again rang the SCOUTED alarm bells for a number of reasons, including an age-group-leading output of interceptions per 90. Rennes have since tied him down to a contract until 2029. They look set to profit from another product of their prestigious academy set-up.
When looking for a Forward, we can call back to Operation Jhon Durán. The alarm-bell metrics highlighted when trying to uncover what may have triggered Aston Villa’s interest was a combination of Physical and Off-Ball Running metrics.
Here is a recap of the Colombian's physical profile. Similar to Baleba, Durán would have stood out for the outlying figures and his age - he played the 2022 MLS season as a 19-year-old.
For Centre Forwards - and also Wide Attackers - SkillCorner’s Off-ball Running data can also be used to discover and snap evaluate these alarming talents. In Durán’s case, he not only ranked first for Runs Leading to Goals when compared to Centre Forwards, but he was the youngest player in the entire dataset.
When creating a 2024/25 dataset for these two position groups and focussing specifically on Team in Possession output, two SCOUTED50 alumni appear in our 75th-percentile catchment.
Adam Daghim and Matias Fernandez-Pardo both featured in the SCOUTED50 class of 2024/25, our attempt to spotlight 50 talents we believe will burst onto the scene. Daghim is another Red Bull asset while Fernandez-Pardo was signed by Lille from Genk after the first three games of the Pro League season. A quick look at his 2023/24 output suggests he very much tripped those Lille wires.
Fernandez-Pardo’s burst has been disrupted by injury, but do not be surprised to see him explode in 2025/26 following the departure of star forward Jonathan David.
Hafiz Umar Ibrahim is another example of the exact type of talent we are looking to catch with this particular net. Stade Reims themselves will have most likely spotted Ibrahim at the Torneo di Viareggio, an annual youth tournament in Italy that has been running since 1949. In 2023/24, Ibrahim finished as the top scorer after netting 10 goals in six appearances as Nigerian side Ojodu City FC reached the semi-finals. This season, despite accumulating under 400 minutes as an impact substitute for Reims in the second half of the season, his dataset-leading Sprint output will have triggered interest. It may have even prompted his trial at Chelsea.
Amady Camara is a Sturm Graz forward, which should always pique your interest. While Chemsdine Talbi burst onto the UEFA Champions League scene this season, scoring a brace for Club Brugge in the Knockout Phase Playoff against Atalanta.
If you look at the Runs Leading to Goals P30 TIP, the only player born in 2005 or later that appears in the top 20 is Robert Vinicius Rodrigues Silva, also known as Robert. But it’s also worth highlighting 2003-born Salzburg striker Petar Ratkov.
Back to the Brazilian. Signed by FC Copenhagen from Cruziero in January this year after just 964 senior minutes for his boyhood club, Robert sat outside the 75th percentile for Sprints P30 TIP in the initial plot so did not appear in the first search. When comparing him to the aforementioned players across all the in-possession variants of the burst metrics alongside the Off-Ball context, there is potential to explore.
However, Talbi’s top 10% ranking for six different metrics stand out the most. Of course, he’s a Wide Attacker, so we’ll have to keep looking for the next Haaland-like Centre-Forward. But the Moroccan’s name is definitely one to watch considering 2024/25 was his first full season at top-flight level.
This exercise goes to show that even the simplest search can help identify talent worth scouting. Applying this framework to less famous leagues, youth competitions and tournaments can inform a bullish approach to the emerging talent market, allowing clubs to gamble on some low-risk but high-reward prospects.
If a teenager is playing senior football, even beyond the Big Five leagues, the likelihood is they are technically talented and physically gifted. They have shown something to their club, their manager and their teammates that has pushed them from behind the curtain into the brightest lights.
Of course, there is no guarantee any of these players will become eight-figure superstars. Not everyone you spot will become Carlos Baleba. But there are clear indicators as to who has the potential to do so. Of course, not every player that appears should be signed; but it does accelerate the process of building shortlists for video analysts and live scouts. With SkillCorner data, you have a better chance at spotting the scene’s up-and-coming talent just before they officially burst onto it.
This newsletter was produced under a commercial collaboration with SkillCorner, SCOUTED’s official data partners. Their tracking and performance data is used by more than 150 of the world’s biggest clubs, leagues and confederations.
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