The Dean Huijsen replacement emerges
Plus: Emanuel Emegha turns heads, Jon Martín goes mainstream, João Neves buzzes around
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Headliners
The SCOUTED news radar.
Jake Entwistle
Short…listed
A short recommendation.
Sticking with Celta Vigo, let us introducve you to 20-year-old Fer López.
The slinky technician is the crown jewel of the Galician club's rejuvenation under the aforementioned Claduio Giráldez. His step up from the B team has established a pathway for his former players, with López the latest to benefit from it. Excelling in the fourth tier, he's now been a first-team regular since the turn of the year.
López's technical quality belies his long and leggy frame. You'd normally associate a 6'2" midfielder with being a little clunkier, perhaps a bit heavier, but the Celta creator is an exception. It can be seen in his sharp close control to escape tight spaces, his ability to travel with the ball while keeping his head up, the consistently excellent weight of his passes, and some of his creative ideas around the box.
He's also a goal threat. Whippy shots from around the edge are a staple of his skillset, as are clever movements that see him arrive late into the penalty area. He's scored four goals in 644 minutes for the first team and another four in 1,411 minutes for the B team.
We really like him, and you will too once you watch him. His profile is easy on the eye and effective on the pitch. By trusting their own like López and Giráldez, Celta are looking upward again.
Notepad
The players we watched this week.
🇯🇵 Koki Kumasaka
- 2001 born; playing as a deep-lying midfielder
- Match: FC Tokyo 1-1 Kashiwa Reysol
- Competition: J.LEAGUE
- Date: 16/4/2025
RCM in a 5-2-3 OOP, DM in 4-3-3 IP. Taller frame with a pretty easy multi-directional mobility. Mopping up lots of loose balls around midfield/in front of defence. Constantly scanning space with quick checks. Really solid technical fundamentals. Touch to kill difficult balls. Step ahead on the ball with decision-making, plays with two touch mostly. Keeps everything ticking over with tempo and accuracy. Always the reset/recycle option at base of MID IP. Has a beat of composure to take touches away from press, creating time, finding solutions. Operates with a sense of higher class on ball. Perhaps forces play into press/traps too often, often to last line. Long legs enable to stretch in to intercept/disrupt. Slight worry about lack of power in duels? Not imposed size in contact and step off in the high press. Can improve angles of recovery runs. Even more controlling IP in 2H, connecting and spreading from base of MID as FCT bunker in — proper pivot. Set up late equaliser with underlapping run and good low cross into box, flashes of ability getting ahead of play. General match intelligence sticks out with adaptability and positional/situational sense.
Come straight out of university and looks a high-level J.LEAGUE midfielder. Does a lot of the basics really well at the base of midfield, particularly as a connecting passer. Potential to become a senior international.
🇦🇷 Agustín Giay
- 2004 born; playing as a right-sided defender
- Match: Cerro Porteño 0-1 Palmeiras
- Competition: Copa Libertadores group stage
- Date: 7/5/2025
RCB in 3-4-3, swinging out to RB situationally. About average height with athletic frame, lean and longer legs, good all-round mobility with a strong burst of speed – athletic skillset fits the wide defender profile. Aggressive squeezing touches, stepping and engaging tightly with tenacity. Getting decent power on unchallenged headers. Unsure about ability in challenged headers. Solid technique on forward passes, punching through/down lines with speed and intent. Solid technique on longer channel passes too, flatter with speed. Comfy and confident being a platform passer in settled build-up. Bit of maverick weirdness to some of his decision and actions.
Showed his potential as the trendy 'wide defender' profile. An all-round athlete that is rugged as a defender and clinical qualities as a forward passer. Like him.
HEATWATCH
SCOUTED50: Keeping tabs on the golden boys.
🔥 36 / NATHAN ZÉZÉ
At the end of March, Nathan Zézé was our cold pick for the week. The reason? He sustained an ankle injury in January and missed 85 days of the Ligue 1 season, drawing doubts over whether his long-expected big summer move would come to pass. He returned in early April and has gone straight back to starting games for Nantes with his usual assuredness, and now is tipped to become Bournemouth’s left-footed replacement for Dean Huijsen after last summer’s intense interest from Inter. Football moves so fast.
🔥 26 / VALENTIN ATANGANA EDOA
Two hot picks this week, you cry? We couldn’t help it; being negative about youngsters is boring. Besides, Stade de Reims’ teenage midfielder keeps pinging our radars, and we wanted to squeeze him in. Last week he cropped up on Jake’s watchlist, as he pointed you towards his partnership with fellow teen Amadou Koné. Edoa is in fine form himself, and after an understated start to his career that has seen him emerge in the shadows cast by teammates like Warren Zaïre-Emery, Mathys Tel and Désiré Doué, he finally has heads turning his way.
SCOUTED Stats
The stat leaders piquing Jake’s interest.
🏆 Michael Olise is not just a Bundesliga champion, he is the only player to crack triple digits for Passes into the Penalty Area, becoming the 14th player on the Stathead database to record 100+ in a single Big Five League campaign. The only other U23 player to do so was Trent Alexander-Arnold in 2020/21. Liverpool need to replace that one way or another.
Jake Entwistle
🐐 In the first leg against Inter, Lamine Yamal recorded the most Touches in the Attacking Penalty Area in a UCL semi-final on the Stathead database. In the second leg, Yamal equalled that first leg record and also completed the most Take-Ons in a UCL knockout game on the Stathead database. Sofascore posted a stat that confirms he is the one true heir to Messi and Neymar’s throne, the crown prince of dribbling.
Jake Entwistle
🩰 To provide the other side of the coin to Jon Martín’s aerial prowess in the Headliners section, I looked at the highest Take-On Success rate of every player to complete at least 20 Take-Ons in Europe’s Big Five Leagues this season. Waldemar Anton leads the way with 83.3% (20/24), following by Oumar Solet (23/29) and Murillo (26/33) as the 2001+ leader - now I can’t stop thinking about a Martín-Murillo centre-back partnership. You can see the full Take-On list here; 2001-born Seydouba Cissé is the first non-defender to appear.
Watchlist
The players to keep an eye on – and where to find them.
🇪🇸 Eliezer Mayenda (2005)
EFL Championship Playoff Semifinal — Friday, 9 May 2025, 20:00 BST
Per FBRef, Sunderland had the youngest average squad age during the 2024/25 Championship season. Seven players born in 2001 or later played at least 1,000 minutes: Chris Rigg, Jobe Bellingham, Eliezer Mayenda, Romaine Mundle, Dennis Cirkin, Trai Hume and Dan Neil. You may know about a few or all of these players and you will likely see them all if you watch both legs of this Playoff semi-final. But I wanted to pick out Mayenda in particular.
2000-born Wilson Isidor perhaps would have been the pick had he been born a year later, but I think Mayenda is even more intriguing. In fact, he is on my shortlist for this Monday’s SCOUTED Squad, focussing on the most fascinating players during the 2024/25 Championship season.
I will go into more detail in the upcoming Newsletter. For now, l will say that his profile screams verticality, directness and relentless production. We will be there.
🇮🇹 Roberto Piccoli (2001)
Serie A — Saturday, 10 May 2025, 14:00 BST
Roberto Piccoli was tentatively highlighted in the Introduction to the Power Forward due to his surprising speed for a 1.9m man. Using the new Archetype Scores developed alongside Gemini Sports Attributes, he profiles best as a Target Forward, which is less surprising given the aforementioned stature.
Jake Entwistle
All this is to say that we need to learn more about him. After all, it has been a long time since he secured the 2019/20 UEFA Youth League Golden Boot with eight goals in seven games. Is there potential for him to play beyond the Target Forward role? Does he have the devastating speed and ball-striking to develop into a full-throttle Power Forward? Should Atalanta keep him or send him on another loan this summer? Is it time to sell? You won’t be able to answer all of these questions from one match, but it’s a start.
Further reading
So much discourse, so little clarity. As Arsenal exit the Champions League at the Parc des Princes, we look back at the club's long search for identity.
By Jake W Fox; first published May 2024.
Identity: Arsenal
I own four Cesc Fàbregas Arsenal shirts. In my pre-teen years, Cesc encapsulated the spirit of my favourite club, and I worshipped him as a paragon of pure football – although I’m not sure at 10 I would’ve known how to articulate it.
As I’ve grown older, as my fandom has changed and my worship of Fàbregas twisted into bitter loathing, I’ve understood his importance beyond my own perspective. Particularly, I’ve seen him through the eyes of the man who introduced him to the world stage at 16 years, 5 months, and 24 days old.
It's not original to note that, following the Invincibles, Arsenal Football Club became Arsène Wenger. Through cultural overhaul and once-in-a-century success, the lines between man and institution blurred. The club bought into Wenger as its heart, mind, and soul. He became the father of the continental crew at Highbury and the progenitor of the Emirates. The symbiosis was more than material, it became symbolic, metaphorical - even the names mirrored, like poetry.
A poetry like that runs through every football club on earth. At Arsenal, it was evident in Fàbregas’ debut and the idol he became. You could see it when Jack Wilshere danced between Xavi and Iniesta and Busquets, history’s greatest midfield, as a boy. It sings in every net that ripples beneath the force of Bukayo Saka’s left boot. In the boardroom they might call it strategy, vision, planning. To us, it’s Identity.
A few of my Fàbregas shirts escaped the bonfire. I want to revisit them now, to ask whether the Identity stitched into that fabric is the same that represents N5 today. Arteta’s Arsenal, like Wenger’s post-Cesc revolution, has youth at its heart. Cesc, Martin. Theo, Bukayo. Jack, Emile. Arsène, Arsenal.
The club is still here. How much of the man is left?
SCOUTED
That’s all, folks. See you next Friday.
For everything on the next generation, stay tuned to SCOUTED.
