Is this young midfielder the next £100m transfer?

Today’s newsletter is a guest piece from Mohamed Mohamed (@moesquare on bsky) on Carlos Baleba, the Brighton midfielder who turned in a great performance against Chelsea last week. He’s been the subject of 9-figure transfer rumours recently.

Moe has writing about football in the public sphere for nearly a decade for various outlets, including The Analyst, The Athletic, and StatsBomb. As well, he’s dipped his toes into the world of YouTube with the channel Footy Insights, which looks into the present and past of the beautiful game. We recommend reading his recent piece for ESPN on Lamine Yamal.

Previously, Moe wrote here about tall strikers on the road to stardom, Dejan Kulusevski’s position change, and Mathys Tel’s potential for Tottenham.

Over the past few years, there’s an argument to be made that Brighton have been among the shrewdest operators in Europe when it comes to player trading. In years past, they would take a bunch of data-led calculated risks on young players with intriguing profiles. The ones who succeed out on loan are shown a pathway to minutes at Brighton. That method netted them the likes of Alexis Mac Allister, Moisés Caicedo, and Julio Enciso. For further more on this, I’d highly suggest reading this piece from Billy Carpenter.

The 2023 and especially the 2024 summer windows have been something of a sea change with regards to Brighton’s recruitment. After years of selling high on their best early prime talents, they’ve decided to spend big on more established prospects and early prime players. The hope is through the combination of high-end talent, along with a fascinating young coach in Fabian Hürzeler, they could strike that combination which allows them to overperform their wage bill over the course of a 38 match season.

One of those key players acquired from the summer of 2023 is Carlos Baleba. Despite Baleba only starting six times with Lille and accumulating less than 600 league minutes from January 2022 to August 2023, Brighton spent a considerable sum on him in the hopes of him being part of their continual succession plan in midfield after the departures of Mac Allister and Caicedo.  

Interestingly, a lot of the hype with Baleba comes from the out of possession play. The biggest clubs in the world are always on the lookout for midfielders who can help with high regains following a loss of possession, deterring counters, and occasionally outright stopping them. Baleba certainly fits the bill for being that kind of midfielder. According to FBref, he’s in the 85th percentile among Premier League midfielders for tackles in the middle third, and 92nd in the final third. What’s evident in these situations is just how much ground he can cover in a few strides, which few midfielders in Europe can boast. In addition to this, he can play a thinking man’s game with defending in deeper areas, in part because he’s already pretty good at detecting runs near his own box as well. 

A good illustration of what Baleba can provide defensively comes from sequences like the one below vs Wolves, where he’s initially out of the frame but comes across the field like a locomotive to help regain the ball, stopping a potential fast break.

There can be some awkward moments with Baleba’s off-ball positioning when Brighton have the ball. At times, there are situations where he could be more aggressive in taking a few steps forward to provide a passing option to a teammate on the ball. That could come from third man runs, or being a release valve on sideways passes into the middle. This could be the result of having relatively minimal experience getting regular first team minutes.

In possession, Baleba is more of a mixed bag. As a passer, he’s secure when it comes to circulating the ball, even when pressured. In terms of pass selection in the middle third, he can be conservative in recycling possession instead of attempting higher value passes forward. This is despite the fact that his technique is pretty good on the whole. When he’s positioned as a central center-back during buildup and given ample time on the ball, he’s more aggressive at hunting out long balls towards runners. Examples like the one below versus Manchester City display Baleba’s hesitancy as a passer.

In contrast, a clear positive with Baleba on the ball is his ability to evade pressure through dribbles and carries. There’s an immense value from being able to do this consistently, as it helps generate artificial transitions, which are crucial for possession heavy sides who constantly face set defensive blocks. It gives them the ability to create chaos through drawing pressure when the opposition commits heavily during a press. 

Baleba’s adept at ball retention under duress and turning away from his marker, including situations where it was quite daring to do so. Occasionally, he’ll just let the ball roll past him and delay the first touch to gain an advantage. If he’s afforded space to carry forward, he’s happy to do so while trying to attract opponents onto him to create openings elsewhere. Part of what makes him tough to contain in these situations is how he can absorb contact and still truck along. I’m normally not one to use a single compilation video as evidence for the strengths and weaknesses of a player, but in this case, it does highlight just how tough it can be for opponents to dispossess Baleba.

As it stands now, Baleba’s profile as a midfielder is quite unique. Although he’s somewhat inconsistent as a progressive passer, he makes up for some of that lost value by just how good he already is at escaping incoming pressure off the dribble, and constantly attacking space through carries. That athletic ability also shows itself through the defensive actions he can generate, including in higher leverage situations. Even when accounting for potential off-ball issues in middle third buildup situations, this skill-set amounts to Baleba already being a net-positive contributor, which is rather impressive for a 21-year-old.

GIven Baleba’s performances this year, it’s not hard to imagine some of the superclubs already monitoring him as a potential successor to their current options. One of those teams might be Manchester City. The squad’s advancing age has led to noticeable defensive fragility in their inability to suppress opponent’s fast breaks, a problem which was bubbling under the surface last year before exploding in 2024-25. With Rodri turning 29 next summer, while Mateo Kovačić and İlkay Gündoğan are both on the other side of 30, it’s unlikely that Nico González is the last defensive midfielder they buy this year.

Baleba wouldn’t be a 1 for 1 Rodri replacement (at least in the short term), because trying to find such a player is basically impossible. While he can replicate most if not all of the out of possession value, he’s not the same caliber of dual threat as a tempo setting passer and ball-carrier like the Spaniard is. Rodri being top notch at those facets of the game while producing 17 goals and assists in the PL led to him winning the Ballon d'Or. The hope would be that with further improvements in his passing through more reps and playing under Pep Guardiola, he could stand out as a top tier midfielder in his own right.  

It’s not hard to look at Baleba’s game and envision a day where he’s one of the better midfielders in the world. How much he improves with his pass selection and trusting his technique on forward passes will be key to his development, as he already has the outlier athletic attributes which few at his position can contend with. The development of Declan Rice over the years provides a template for Baleba to emulate, including becoming a greater final third threat. Among the numerous young gems in Brighton’s squad at the moment, it might be that Carlos Baleba becomes the greatest one of them all.

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