Falling down an Aleksandar Pavlovic rabbit hole
…and Konstantinos Karetsas hits the stat jackpot
Welcome to The Rabbit Hole.
This newsletter is collection of single-game stat leaders from the latest week of football. But beware: I will explore any tangent I feel is interesting and pull at every single thread until I have exhausted all potential insight.
- A Zambian striker attempts a record-breaking number of Shots
- Aleksandar Pavlović puts up monster numbers that only William Saliba can beat
- Konstantinos Karetsas joins an exclusive list of teenage playmakers including Rayan Cherki and Martin Ødegaard
- Karetsas (again) equals an all-time under-23 record and the youngest player to hit a stat jackpot
- Jérémy Doku and Lamine Yamal's dribble duopoly
- VfL Wolfsburg must have the secret centre-back sauce
- TSG Hoffenheim and their Kosovo core
👶 Breakout Babies
Two 15-year-olds made an appearance in the past week. Luis Fragozo (CS Emelec, LigaPro Ecuador) was the youngest at 15 years and 236 days followed by Eirik Granaas (Fredrikstad, Eliteserien). Both have featured previously. Both are the youngest debutants in their respective league’s history.
SCOUTED50 duo Gilberto Mora (17-43) and Vasilije Kostov (17-203) were the youngest goalscorers but you will know all about those two by now. At 17 years and 248 days old, Jacob Ambæk was the third-youngest and he’s not yet appeared in this newsletter or any previous iteration of SCOUTED Stats. Ambæk is 2008-born, 1.85m centre-forward that has three goals in 623 Superliga minutes for Brøndby IF. All three goals have come under Steve Cooper, a brilliant manager for young players, and he’s recently being playing in a front two alongside with SCOUTED favourite Noah Nartey.
SCOUTED Squad November 2025
ICYMI: The first Team of the Month was a selection of the most fascinating players from the 2025 MLS season.
That's 22 players born in 2003 or later you can add to your shortlists and start tracking.
At 16 years and 41 days old, Elie Mbavu was the youngest assist provider. Although, I’m still not sure if it’s fair to include players for Jong Genk. They are no doubt exciting talents and the Challenger Pro League is excellent for player development but by virtue of being a youth reserve team, the players therein are much too young. Instead, I would rather highlight first-team players such as Youssef Hamdaoui. At 17 years and 255 days old, he came off the bench for Antwerp in the 86th minute against Club Brugge in Belgium’s top-flight and set up 2004-born Argentinian Mauricio Benítez to score the only goal of the game and secure a 1-0 away win in the 88th minute.
Across the Big Five League games, Rudy Matondo (17-261) was the youngest player to feature, playing the full 90 minutes of Auxerre’s away draw with Paris FC. The youngest player to score (and to assist) was Lamine Yamal. I’m not even going to fill in his info anymore.
The second-youngest goalscorer was Angers winger Harouna Djibrin (19-25) and the second-youngest assist provider was Alexander Røssing-Lelesiit (18-314, HSV) - although the Norwegian was later sent off for a second booking, Fábio Vieira came off the bench to score a 90+4’ winner against Stuttgart.
