Newsletters

England's next gen dazzles, Woltemade confounds, Karetsas explodes

All your wonderkid news in one place: The Shortlist, 28th March 2025

Tom Curren

Tom Curren

— 12 min read
Greece wonderkid Konstantinos Karetsas after scoring against Scotland

Happy Friday, scouts. Welcome to The Shortlist, your weekly, bitesize download on football’s next generation.

Support us by forwarding this newsletter to a friend. Did someone forward this to you? Sign up for free. Want more detail and feature stories? SCOUT NOTES or MNS.

Enjoy this free newsletter? You can gift us a one-off tip, here.

Headliners

The players we watched this week.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
Lee Carsley and his England U-21s returned with a crash and a bang and more than a singular whallop this week. First came an utterly nonsensical defeat to France in which the long limbs of Hugo Ekitike put them to the sword; I swear to god the pitch was bigger than regulation, such was the amount of space afforded to both sides. They then welcomed Portugal and almost matched that scoreline, winning 4-2. Hayden Hackney and Ethan Nwaneri both claimed their first U-21 goals - Nwaneri’s came inside 10 minutes of his full debut, and was assisted by Jobe Bellingham, in a poetic mirror of Myles Lewis-Skelly and Jude. Come for the talent, stay for Carsley playing midfielders at flying wing-back and Rico Lewis at centre-half. Awesome.
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
Speaking of Myles, Lewis-Skelly scored as many goals as he lost duels (1) during his first England camp. Watching a player we’d known as a ball-carrying, progressive midfielder make his Arsenal debut as a full-back was scary, but MLS’ tenacity and physical maturity has taken us all by surprise (well maybe not the mega-nerds, but me at least). And those minutes of the Rice-MLS pivot we enjoyed against Latvia? More of that, please and thank you.
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
To round out the England talk, the talent pipeline shows no signs of slowing down. If you thought the U-21 group was good - and the U-19s for that matter, we spoke about them briefly last week - the U-17s are just as precocious. Just look at this midfield. Rio Ngumoha, Max Dowman and Rio McAidoo should need little introduction to SCOUTED readers, and Finlay Gorman is the newest jewel in Pep Guardiola’s Foden/McAtee Academy-to-midfield pipeline - City reportedly spent up to £5m to buy him from Leeds when he was fifteen (you read that correctly). Oh, and up top they’ve got Emile Heskey’s kid, who, like his father, is enormous - unlike his father, he moves like bloody Thierry Henry. 15 years since Mesut Özil and Thomas Müller showed them the future, England have claimed it for themselves.
🇩🇪
Speaking of, Germany have struggled to produce strikers since Miroslav Klose drew a…klose…on his prodigious career. Tim Kleindienst scored in the most recent round of fixtures and Niclas Füllkrug remains an option, but otherwise? It’s been slim pickings. Enter Nick Woltemade, an absolutely enormous 23-year-old Stuttgart attacker Jake likened to Vincent Adultman (three children in a trenchcoat, for the uncultured among you). The problem? Apparently, he’s not a nine. He’s been showing up in Jake’s data dives for months now, and having now seen some footage of this giant man blasting around the pitch myself, I too am absolutely shocked he’s not a typical centre-forward. If you’ve watched more of Woltemade than we have, we’d absolutely love to hear your impressions on this bizarre man-mountain - jump in the comments or reply to this email. Jake got some great replies here if you’re interested.
🇵🇾
Julio Enciso, the human Puskas generator, scored another worldie. ‘Nuff said.
🇳🇴
16-year-old Mikkel Bro Hansen scored a hat-trick for FK Bodø/Glimt on his official senior debut as the Eliteserien commenced. Llew will be watching.
🇺🇸
Not to be outdone by the recent exploits of his free-scoring clubmate Mika Biereth, Folarin Balogun returned to action with an easy hat-trick on Wednesday. The American has been out since early December with a shoulder injury, but found minutes for AS Monaco’s Elite Group as they beat Brighton’s U23s 3-2. Strikers: get them to the principality and watch them go.
🇬🇷
Konstantinos Karetsas to the world. Like Lewis-Skelly, the Genk attacker found the net during his first-ever senior international camp this week. He only announced his intent to represent Greece a few weeks ago - they wasted no time in calling him up, and he duly produced this gorgeous finish to become the country’s youngest-ever goalscorer. Massive clubs are already preparing a summer dash, but his eyes will be firmly on winning Belgium’s absolutely insane Championship playoffs, which begin this weekend.

As ever, if you're watching a player you'd like to share with the world, hit the comments or respond to this email.

Short…listed:

A short recommendation.

This week, we're drawing your attention to the future of Greek football.

Graphic with the background, attributes and potential of KRC Genk and Greece's Konstantinos Karetsas

Before this month, Konstantinos Karetsas was the future of Belgian football. His decision to represent the country of his parentage at senior international level is another coup for Greece, who, after decades of disappointment and mismanagement, have a hoard of exciting young prospects all of a sudden.

Karetsas adds to a list that includes Stefanos Tzimas, Christos Mouzakitis, Giannis Konstantelias, Kostas Koulierakis and Charalampos Kostoulas, and we're probably forgetting a few. Anyone that watched Greece thrash Scotland at Hampden Park last Sunday witnessed the dawn of an exciting and unprecedented new era.

But Karetsas is nothing new to those in the know. He's been starting games most weeks for KRC Genk since the start of this season, and he put together an exciting highlight reel playing for their B team in the Belgian second division before that. His technical talent is outstanding – capable of shifting momentum of games by itself – and it manifests in tricky creativity and spectacular goals.

The 17-year-old has a big future for club and country. Keep tabs.

HEATWATCH

SCOUTED50: Keeping tabs on the golden boys.

🔥 45 / MARTIM FERNANDES
Liverpool’s quest to replace Trent Alexander-Arnold begins and you should expect Martim Fernandes to pop up as an option. We included this 2006er in SCOUTED50 2024/25 because of his playmaking ability from right-back. Get ready to see this Pathfinder prospect passing through the rumour mill this summer.

🧊 36 / NATHAN ZÉZÉ
Nathan Zézé was on track for a big summer transfer but is now closing in on 100 days missed through an ankle injury. He is expected to return in April but it remains to be seen how quickly he will reach his early-season levels - or whether he will at all.

SCOUTED Stats

The stat leaders piquing Jake’s interest. For the detail, read Monday Night SCOUTED.

✨ Lamine Yamal is the only player in Europe’s Big Five Leagues with 100+ Successful Take-ons. In the home stretch, he’s closing in on a Jadon Sancho record and looking to take Allan Saint-Maximin’s crown.

💪 Omar El Hilali is about to break triple figures for Tackles, becoming the first U-23 centurion this season. The Moroccan right-back is 10 Tackles ahead of Tom Bishof and BlueCo duo Andrey and Moisés Caicedo. The transfer rumours have already started.

🎯 Trent Alexander-Arnold’s monopoly of the Passes into the Penalty Area podium is under threat. The soon-to-be Real Madrid right-back is the only U23 player that remains in Michael Olise’s path to become the U23 single-season champion for this metric. Complete three in Bayern’s next game, he will take third. Complete six, he will move into second. Complete 19 more this season and Olise will conquer top spot.

Watchlist

The players to keep an eye on – and where to find them.

🇫🇷 Dilane Bakwa (2002)

RC Strasbourg vs. Olympique Lyonnais

Ligue 1 — Friday, 28 March 2025, 19:45 GMT

One of the most creative and most fouled U23 players across Europe’s Big Five Leagues this season, Dilane Bakwa is fully fit and wrecking havoc from right wing-back role for Liam Rosenoir’s Strasbourg. Bakwa is the player you should pay most attention to in this game, but you will also get to watch Diego Moreira flying down the opposite flank with the new Valentin Barco x Andrey Santos double pivot operating in-between. Don’t forget Emanuel Emegha reprising the Power Forward role up top. And don’t sleep on Guéla Doué; Désiré’s older brother is having a fantastic season at right centre-back. For Lyon, let’s hope Rayan Cherki (2003) is fit to play.

🇩🇪 Nick Woltemade (2002)

Eintracht Frankfurt vs. VfB Stuttgart

Bundesliga — Saturday, 29 March 2025, 17:30 GMT

If you’d like to join us on our scouting quest this week, here’s your chance. Woltemade might look like Vincent Adultman, but he moves like a ballerina. During the international break, he was directly involved in all four goals Germany U21s scored: he provided an assist for the match-winner against Slovakia before dunking on Spain with a hat-trick. You really should watch the first of his three goals, linked in the Headliners section: poetry in motion.

On Saturday, he goes up against another slim-and-silky operator in Hugo Ekitiké, who also scored a hat-trick during the international break, netting three times in a crazy 5-3 win for France U21 against England U21. We told you to watch that game, so don’t ignore us again.

Vox Populi

We’re listening - here's a quick poll, for fun.

Last week we asked for your favourite Teenage Mutant (Spanish) Centre-Back and the responses were…fascinating. Here are the results:

🥇 Pau Cubarsí - 47.8%
🥇 Dean Huijsen - 47.8%
🥈 Yarek Gasiorowski - 4.3%
😢 Raúl Asencio - 0%

That’s right - we have our first two-way tie. I wish I could include all my favourite comments, but here’s a selection:

Cubarsí: “A hard choice but the way he has stepped into the Barcelona team and plays like a 30 year old is unbelievable to watch. He’s also playing in a tactic that can sometimes leave the defence exposed but still stands out for his calm and control.” Your comment stands out for its calm and control.

Huijsen: “He's fucking 6'5 but with the fluidity of Leonardo on the pitch but the punch of Rafael near goal.” True.

Cubarsí: “Dominant.” I agree.

Huijsen: “Bournemouth, Bournemouth, Bournemouth.” Can’t argue with that.

And for balance, Gasiorowski: “He’s the most underrated one by a mile, a complete CB who could slot right into a Premier League team and start impressing immediately, he uses his body well and good on the ball. Left footed as well, he’s too good for a struggling Valencia side. If he leaves in the summer then by this time next year he’ll be talked about as one of the best young CBs in the world, if not one of the best CBs in general.” Great comment, standing out from the crowd.

Thanks so much for all your excellent responses - I completely forgot to include a name credit in last week’s form, a guff I’ve fixed this time around. We go again:

This week’s question:

☕️ Which of these England generations is the most stacked?

  • U-21 (Nwaneri, Bellingham, McAtee etc)
  • U-19 (George, Dibling, Rigg etc)
  • U-17 (Dowman, Ngumoha, Gorman etc)

Vote using the form below, or click here.

Further reading

This week at SCOUTED, we fell down a YouTube rabbit hole (relatable).

This spot is usually reserved for other articles we publish, but I’ve had something strange banging around in my brain this week, and thought I’d take this opportunity to put some form of it to paper. It doesn’t fall under our usual umbrella whatsoever, but I thought it was interesting enough to raise. Enjoy? - Tom

Baller League is football for the attention economy

I was browsing YouTube while waiting for the England kick-off on Monday evening and stumbled across a football stream with 90,000 viewers - more people than would later watch Thomas Tuchel’s debut game inside Wembley. It was the live stream for the inaugural fixtures of Baller League, Lukas Podolski and Mats Hummel’s bizarre six-a-side tournament that’s been such a hit in Germany it’s been exported to both the UK and US.

Baller League is, as far as I can tell, football for the TikTok generation - a short-form format seemingly designed to generate as many social media clips as possible. Each half features random ‘Gamechanger’ rulesets - like 1vs1, or every foul becoming an immediate red card - which apparently serve as a firewall against the dwindling attention spans of its viewers. It’s still, somehow, not enough: after a period of five minutes without a goal, of careful, probing football of the kind you might see in the Premier League, I noted some of the comments I saw whizz by in the live chat: “This is way too long,” one user said; “this is dryyyyyyy”, another; “how could you make futsal boring”, perhaps the most enjoyable.

The first fixture was between sides managed by Freddie Ljungberg, Ian Wright and Jens Lehmann, and that ‘AngryGinge’ bloke. The ‘AngryGinge’ bloke won 7-2, a victory he shared with a guy following him around and filming on an iPhone. At one point during the game, a defender stopped with the ball at his feet and did a little dance. Later, a cameraman sprinted across the pitch in an attempt to get ‘the shot’ and almost took a shot to the face. At half time, an excruciating interview was conducted with a player who for some reason seemed to be getting a haircut - a deeply weird practice that only makes sense when you realise Gillette are one of the league’s major sponsors.

“A new era of football” is the league’s tagline, a slogan that sours with the sight of London’s half-empty Copper Box Arena juxtaposed against the knowledge millions will later watch the clips generated there online. A new era, in which the usual reasons fans connect with football teams - community, family, local pride - are replaced by whichever influencer they’re most attached to. An era in which attention, ad revenue and user data are the raison d’être, above any of the usual things we associate with our game, outdated and luddite notions like beauty, story, or heart.

I am being ungenerous and cynical and perhaps, some of you might say, taking this more seriously than it deserves, but I couldn’t help but find it all slightly alarming. And I think, given how it presents as a smorgasbord of all Giovanni Infantino’s worst impulses, as an unruly, faux-punk product of the same desires that once birthed the European Super League, it should be alarming - or at very least, of interest - to anyone attempting to map the future of our game.

There is good stuff buried in the strobe lights and abysmal KSI anthems, of course. Jordan Ibe, the ex-Liverpool winger who was mocked online for plying his trade in non-league, now has the chance to write headlines on his terms. Michael Ndiweni was on the bench for Newcastle United’s historic clash with PSG last season and made his Premier League debut the same year; he was released in the summer and now has a chance to start again. There are nuggets of warm narrative sprinkled throughout this endeavour, but they strike me almost as happy accidents. The league’s champions will say they’ve built a platform for unfancied talent to shine - for the rest of us, it just looks like a vehicle to cut up the game into Instagram Reels and sell shaving cream.

But perhaps I’m just old. Dread it, run from it - boomerism arrives, all the same. I’d love to hear what you think.

That’s all, folks. See you next Friday.

For everything on the next generation, stay tuned to SCOUTED.
Upgrade to paid to unlock all our writing.

Read more