The World's Best Young Joshua Kimmich

Joshua Kimmich has been the world’s best example of an “inverted fullback” for about a decade. An inverted fullback is a hybrid role of defensive midfielder and actual fullback, typically charged with high volume passing roles for possession teams. Blessed with a brilliant footballing brain, Kimmich learned his job behind Phillip Lahm (one of the best right backs ever), and was taught the finer points of the role by Pep Guardiola during his stint as Bayern manager.

Kimmich was recently mentioned as a potential target for Arsenal (who definitely need another defensive midfielder), but given they extended Jorginho already, Arsenal probably don’t have space for another older midfielder in the squad, especially one likely to carry a longer contract.

Thankfully, what stats and data allow us to do is to dig into the entire footballing world’s data set (thank you, StatsBomb), and search for players that have similar outputs. The most common use of this feature since we implemented it has been “find me the player most like Lionel Messi that I can afford,” and it has been proven both useful and wildly popular. In this case, we’re looking for Kimmich-like comps not from the most recent season, but from a higher output season in 2020-21.

The first name that pops up on the list is Pedri at Barcelona, which makes sense because Xavi’s style is also high possession and high volume, and Pedri is genuinely awesome at the role when healthy.

The second name on the list is a less-exciting left back that I’ll keep an eye on, but the third one made me sit up straight and immediately go to TransferMarkt to check his contract status.

Petar Sucic. 20 years old. 1.83m tall. And Far enough under the radar that he doesn’t even have good highlight videos on Youtube. He’s signed a contract with Dinamo Zagreb through 2028, so they presumably know exactly what they have and were delighted to lock him into a long-term deal.

Some people might say, “Yeah, whatever, Croatia is a land of beaches and Game of Thrones sets, and nothing more. Who cares about his league output?” Silly wabbits… Croatia is actually BEST KNOWN for producing an endless line of the world’s best midfield talents. It’s also already extremely rare that players of any age produce Kimmich-like stats in a league, so when a 20-year old combines high output defensive stats with high open play xG Assisted, I’m going to pay attention. You probably should too.

Oh, and a bonus nugget for Liverpool fans… Orkun Kokcu has a fairly high similarity score to Kimmich from last season. I think he’s too attacking for Liverpool’s recent recruitment profile, but this at least makes me a little more open to there being something valuable there that should be investigated. Alternatively, maybe LFC are adjusting their tactical approach slightly away from destructive midfielders and creative fullbacks. I guess we’ll know more when the games begin.

Rumours and News

• Jarrad Branthwaite is listed as a target for a variety of teams in less financial trouble than Everton. He’s LARGE, good in the air (these two things are not always correlated), and has a year of blooding in the Premier League under Sean Dyche. The latter element I think is a good thing, provided you don’t need anyone to open up play in a Pep or Arteta-style attack. I completely respect the ginger, gravel-voiced old warlock in his ability to coach up PL-caliber centrebacks. Branthwaite went on loan to PSV last year too, which was a really clever choice by someone either at the club or the agent level. If you have a good, young CB in an English academy, YES send them on loan to the lower leagues to toughen up, but ALSO get them out to a league where they constantly need to play the ball on the deck as part of their finishing school.
  
  This feels like a player dev path that is still unusual right now, but just as necessary as making sure your strikers get at least a season out wide in their teenage academy years.
  
  Stats are trickier with CBs and I haven’t watched Branthwaite enough to have a professional opinion on him, but all of the above adds up to good things in my opinion.

• Romano reports Real Madrid are allegedly in talks around Franco Mastantuono. The Argentine teenager apparently has a €45M release clause at age 17. He’s actually seen playing time for River Plate at that age, and Real Madrid love buying up the best South American teenagers for gaudy fees. [To be fair, they have been pretty good at it, too.]

• Chadi Riad joins Crystal Palace for €15M from Real Betis. He came out of the Barcelona academy, played a bunch at CB for Betis last season, and is only 20 years old. I like this deal a lot, even if I wouldn’t necessarily expect him to see a ton of playing time in year 1.

• “Ederson could leave Manchester City this summer, if…” TRANSLATION: Ederson would like to negotiate a new deal. Please pay him more.

• “Liverpool like Leny Yoro.” Sure, why not? He’s an 18-yo centre back picking up large playing time at Lille in Ligue 1. If you are a teenager getting major playing time in a decent league, you end up on the scouting list for basically any competent team in the world these days. Then you get teams like Barcelona, who seem to produce a world class academy kid every year right now, but then they don’t manage their minutes well enough and those kids get hobbled with persistent injury issues.

Have a great weekend. And tell your friends!

—Ted