Nailed it?

I worked on a project in 2017 to find 100 “under the radar” pre-peak-age players in Europe good enough to move to the Premier League in the next 12-24 months. It was very much a “see/predict the future” project, and one that was exciting in scope and challenge. Predicting the future in recruitment is extremely difficult, and seven years on, the work we did back then is now a treasure trove of player evaluations both good and bad.

I mention it today because there were two young midfielders we highlighted early in the project playing for Villarreal and Real Betis. The “Suitable For” characteristic was the level we thought they would be good enough to be recruited at in the next 12 months.

Midfielder 1
Age: 21
Suitable for: Top 6 Squad Player

Midfielder 2
Age: 21
Suitable for: Top Half PL

Midfielder 2 was Euros Player of the Tournament Rodri Hernandez Cascante. It’s clear we could have been more punchy in our estimation of Rodri’s level. He’d go from Villarreal to a season at Atletico Madrid before becoming a mainstay at Manchester City and quite possibly the best DM in world football.

Midfielder 1 was Fabian Ruiz. He would end up playing a variety of roles at Napoli before a more recent move to PSG. He can basically play any role midfield necessary for a Champions League level team. This sounds especially useful for certain Premier League runners up coached by former midfielders, who also need to bolster that area of the squad? Stanislav Lobotka was probably Nikos’ favourite midfielder to watch from that project, while Fabian was mine. They ended up playing together for a while in Italy, though only Lobotka won a title there alongside another stats standout Andre Zambo Anguissa.

Recruitment remains ever challenging, but sometimes you do really good work and then throw it into a daily newsletter seven years later, after the players you looked at win a Euros title.

—TK

News and rumours

• Speaking of Fabian Ruiz, PSG are willing to let him leave for the right price. They’d apparently like to replace him and previous newsletter subject Manuel Ugarte for the mentor/mentee duo of Joshua Kimmich and João Neves. No one seems to know who’s interested in buying Ruiz, but as mentioned above, we’re guessing that Arsenal might be a good fit.

• If you’ve been wondering who PSG will target to replace Kylian Mbappe, it might be Victor Osimhen. On the other side of that deal, Napoli would like to buy Romelu Lukaku for about €25m after cashing in on their current star striker.

• Flynn Downes looks set to join Southampton permanently for £18m after a good loan spell last season. Ends up being a decent little flipper job for West Ham.

• As for potential ins for West Ham, they’re interested in Arsenal winger Reiss Nelson. It’s been a tough couple years for the one-time top prospect, but he showed some flashes of high caliber ability in sub appearances last season. You’d have to think the Hammers would look for a low initial fee, heavy clause and incentive based deal.

• Newcastle and Everton are battling it out to sign Willy Gnonto from Leeds. He improved after moving from left to right wing, but also after taking a step down to the Championship. Consider me excited, but skeptical about his future.

• 20-year-old left-footed Mainz winger Brajan Gruda is a Brighton target, and just enjoy watching some highlights. Also, 99th percentile in StatsBomb’s OBV metric. We’re probably not far off from his YouTube highlights comps having “THE NEXT SALAH?” in the title.