Shopping at the Balkan Supermarket
Shopping at the Balkan Supermarket
Picking three budget players perfect for Serie A.
Serie A clubs love buying players from their neighbours across the Adriatic. They buy more players from that part of the world than any other top five league in Europe, by a wide margin.
To show you exactly how wide, let’s try to loosely define the Balkans. There’s no strict definition, but I’ll throw into the mix the following countries: Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the purposes of this piece, although they’re not a Balkan country, I’m going to add Slovakia, because they are part of this story.
With that controversial issue settled, we total 82 Serie A players hailing from our assembled countries. That’s more than double any of the other top five leagues, and more than four times the Premier League.
Why? Story time.
While players from Serbia and Croatia are very much known products at this stage, football in other parts of this region is improving at a rapid pace. The football we saw on display from Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania and Albania at EURO 2024 was testament to that, while Greece and North Macedonia have had their own share of EURO success (and in Greece’s case, World Cup success too), over the last couple of decades.
While some of these countries haven’t necessarily produced a steady flow of top tier players, they have shown the ability to in flashes — think Dimitar Berbatov, Radu Drăgușin, Jan Oblak, Mirko Vučinić, Milan Škriniar, Goran Pandev, Edin Džeko, etc.
Interestingly, the first stop for four of those seven players, after leaving their home countries, was Italy - Drăgușin at Juventus, Vučinić at Lecce, Škriniar at Sampdoria, and Pandev at Inter.
As you can see, it’s not just the big Serie A teams that are active in this market. There are options for all types of clubs, ranging from Juventus, Inter and Milan, to Fiorentina and Atalanta, to smaller outfits like Lecce and Empoli.
They operate within the full breadth of the market, too. Juventus, for example, have reached for the top end in the past, especially with the signing of Marko Pjaca (who I maintain would've become an elite player if his knees didn't explode).
But more recently the Turin club have become incredibly active in the cheaper, young player market in the Balkans. This has led to the acquisitions of Radu Drăgușin, Ivano Srdoč, and of course, SCOUTED favourite Vasilije Adžić.
But Juventus aren't the only club following these markets closely. On the back of high-level performances from Balkan teams at UEFA youth international tournaments, we’ve seen Milan (Marko Lazetić, Jan-Carlo Simić), Inter (Luka Topalović) and Napoli (Matija Popović) make forays into the Balkan market (NB: Simić was signed from Stuttgart).
Part of this also coincides with the introduction of reserve teams into the Italian pyramid. Drăgușin is one of the poster boys of the early years of the Juventus Next Gen project, playing in Serie C. Adžić was earmarked to follow that same path, but has proven to be so good after arriving from Montenegro that he's gone straight into the first team.
Every top five league has a lower-ranked league(s), often with a shared language in common, they lean on to fill out their talent pools. For many years in the Premier League, it was Scottish and Irish players that filled that niche, although the rising financial power of the league has changed that dynamic. La Liga was always a gateway for the Spanish-speaking South Americans, but also very linked to the Portuguese market next door. France’s colonial ties to Africa has made it a natural pathway for many French-speaking footballers from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Morocco, Algeria, etc. The Bundesliga, meanwhile, has always been a pathway for Austrian and Swiss players due to the linguistic ties to both.
But Serie A is a weird one. Not many countries speak Italian, although familial ties to Argentina and Brazil have seen Italy become the landing spot for a long list of extremely gifted footballers from South America.
Serie A clubs have always been quite unconventional in their approach to recruitment, with a lot of their best work coming through relationship building and establishing ties.
A great example is former Fiorentina sporting director Pantaleo Corvino, now working with Lecce. During his 14-year stint in Tuscany, Corvino was on very good terms with super agent Fali Ramadani, and was able to lock down deals for a number of his clients.
Those include some really good players that Fiorentina flipped for some big sums: Stevan Jovetić (sold to Manchester City), Matija Nastasić (Manchester City), Nikola Kalinić (Milan), Nikola Milenković (Nottingham Forest), and Adem Ljajić (Roma).
Four of those players were brought from Partizan Belgrade, so you can be sure that relationship played an important role in the deal that brought Dušan Vlahović to Fiorentina, and eventually, a pot of gold when they sold him to Juventus for around €80 million. It pays to know people in the right places.
Now we’ve got story time out of the way, it’s time to take a closer look at the anatomy of one of these transfers.
To do so, I thought it’d be fun, in classic SCOUTED fashion, to build a shortlist. Fill a shopping basket, if you will, as we stroll down the aisles of this Balkan supermarket.
First, let’s identify what these leagues do well - and what kind of player they might be poised to produce. Then let’s see if we can pick out a few names to suggest for a move to Serie A, for a scattering of quality and budgets.
That’s going right in my basket.
Read on for our three undiscovered gems:
An athletic, outlier forward from Serbia
A metronomic, pressure-resistant midfielder from Slovakia
The next elite creative talent from Croatia
MINING THE BALKANS
We’ll centre our focus on four top-flight divisions: Serbia, Croatia, Slovakia and Romania.
First up, let’s try to gauge what the athletic differences are between our six leagues, against a benchmark of over 40 European leagues.
It’s not quite pushing the limits of human capabilities like the Premier League, but Serie A is still a very athletically demanding league, especially when it comes to those high-end burst attributes — sprints, peak sprint velocity (PSV-99), and sprinting distance.
So let’s nail down that as one attribute we might look for in a player arriving from Serbia, a league that matches up fairly closely to Serie A for these attributes.
WISHLIST ITEM: ATHLETIC PLAYER FROM THE SERBIAN SUPER LEAGUE
Let’s mine Serbia’s bullish, aggressive league for a physical beast.
Next up, let’s look at how players from these leagues deal with pressure - using different SkillCorner metrics to help us make an assessment on where to go shopping next.
Our closest match here is with the Slovakian First League. They actually align quite uniformly with Serie A, both from completion rate and volume metrics. The ball retention under pressure numbers are quite distinctly holding the mid-point between Serie A and the rest of our leagues.
So, we’ll go shopping in Slovakia for our next player.
WISHLIST ITEM: ELITE BALL-RETAINER FROM THE SLOVAKIAN FIRST LEAGUE
Yeah, let’s find the next Stanislav Lobotka.
Naturally, I also want to get involved in the Croatian market. For this one, it was actually difficult to nail down an area in which the league actually had a point of difference in comparison to the other leagues we are looking at.
So I jumped on a hunch. We know that Croatia have history when it comes to developing elite creative midfielders. And I won’t lie, I very much have a player in mind that I want to talk about before this piece is over. In fact, I remain perpetually surprised that this player has not been snapped up by a top five league club.
You’ll have to read on for his name, wink wink.
WISHLIST ITEM: THE NEXT ELITE CROATIAN PLAYMAKING MIDFIELDER
Welcome back, Luka Modrić.
So that’s our shopping list. Now let’s go digging for some bargain buys.
1. ATHLETIC PLAYER FROM THE SERBIAN SUPER LEAGUE
Let’s mine Serbia’s bullish, aggressive league for a physical beast.
My first thought looking up players from the 2023/24 edition of the Serbian Super League was, ‘my word, clubs don’t waste any time’.
Within a few minutes of my search, narrowed down to players aged 20 or younger, a few standout names had already been taken off the board: Kosta Nedeljković (Aston Villa), Miloš Luković (Strasbourg), Samed Baždar (Real Zaragoza), and Nikola Zecević (BK Häcken).
Of 19 players under the age of 20 that had played eight or more games of 60 minutes or more playing time, four had already moved: all four were ranked in the top nine players for PSV-99.
Obviously, this got me thinking that I might be stumbling upon a little bit of a trend here...
Thankfully, there’s still plenty to chose from. Naturally, we are aiming our search towards younger players, and there are a lot of names that fit the bill.
But two stood out in particular: Mihajlo Cvetković and Matija Gluščević.
They stood out for slightly different reasons.
Chucking Gluščević on a graph alongside wingers from Serie A and the Serbian Super League, he is a big outlier.
His PSV-99 number, 32.37 km/h, ranks right alongside Mykhailo Mudryk. He’s proper quick. As I remarked in this profile I wrote in July on Nico Williams, 31 km/h is around the mark where an attackers speed transitions from being an asset into a real weapon.
On top of that, for a 2004-born player, a sprinting output of close to 400m per 60 minutes of ball in play (BIP) is also very impressive.
On the flipside, you have Cvetković, a proper number nine.
Now, Cvetković’s numbers don’t pop off the page. But one number is very important: 2007, the year of his birth. Placing him on a graph alongside strikers from Serie A and the Serbian Super League, he is recording middle-of-the-road numbers at just 17.
I also possess the added benefit of having watched a bit of Cvetković for Serbia at the Under-17 Euros this year, in which he made our Team of the Tournament.
Before we dig a little deeper on this, I just want to note that athletic benchmarking is a powerful tool, because it’s not outwardly impacted by moving to a tougher league. However, there will be players whose running numbers can be nerfed by their role, or even, in the case I’ve noticed, by playing for really dominant possession-based teams like Manchester City or Arsenal.
Because Cvetković is 17, not eligible to move to a foreign club until January, and because he’s probably more likely to go to a ‘bigger’ club, let’s focus on Gluščević for the purposes of this piece.
OK, so Matija Gluščević is a 20-year-old winger (sometimes forward) for FK Radnički 1923. He’s played for Serbia at every age group level, including a debut with the under-21s in March, 2024 — always a good sign.
He’s also come through the Crvena Zvezda youth system, before going on a bit of a side quest to eventually settle with Radnički. Even more interesting was the fact he was named in Serbia’s provisional 35-man squad for the Euros. I also found some fleeting links to Arsenal — make of that what you will.
While Gluščević is an athletic freak, he definitely has some rough edges to smooth over with and without possession.
Before doing a big deep dive, it’s easy to spot some macro issues, although I think some of them will be coachable - and he clearly has raw athletic tools to utilise to excel in a wide-forward role.
His run profile is surprisingly lacklustre, although I think playing lots of reps on the right, rather than on the left as a right-footer, probably has some negative effects here. And that’s really what we are looking for; not all bad stats are equal. I touched on this heavily in a Kobbie Mainoo piece I did earlier this year, and I will re-emphasise it here: there are so many variables that can explain ‘bad stats’.
And this is what we are looking for: potential inefficiencies in club’s recruiting models in order to find low-budget players for a hypothetical SCOUTED FC Serie A team.
Anyway, here is Gluščević’s off-ball running profile compared to other Serbian Super League wingers:
I can instantly see the value proposition here. How can we get the fastest guy in the entire league running in behind more than 5.1 times per 30 TIP?
Looking at some more other metrics, I couldn’t find any good reason for why he should be shackled deeper.
Even so, with around 1,600 league minutes last season, he had eight goal contributions in a low mid-table team. In a team with the right stylistic fit that allows him to play as a genuine left-sided wide attacker, I think there’s room for that to improve, even with a move up to a level like Serie A. His height (6’1”) is another nice point of difference.
I should note however, that since Serbia are not part of the EU, restrictions apply on Serie A clubs shopping here, which does create some limitations when deciding to take upside risk plays in this market. Italian clubs are able to sign a maximum of two non-EU players per season, with the second slot becoming available only if the club sells a non-EU player already in the squad.
2. ELITE BALL-RETAINER FROM THE SLOVAKIAN FIRST LEAGUE
Yeah, let’s find the next Stanislav Lobotka.
These wide searches throw up so many funny little surprises. This time, it was trawling through Slovakia on my hands and knees trying to unearth the next Stanislav Lobotka.
Filtering for players 22-and-under and sorting for the highest Ball Retention Ratios under pressure instantly threw up a couple of familiar names: Nigeria’s Jude Sunday and Mahmudu Bajo of The Gambia.
Again, attentive SCOUTED Ultras will recognise those names from our Under-20 World Cup coverage in May 2023, with Bajo making our alternative Team of the Tournament and Sunday being Nigeria’s best performer.
It reiterates how effective these tournaments can be at spring-boarding talented African players into European football.
But the player I want to focus on is Samuel Gidi. This is a fantastic case study of something our good friend Tim Keech of MRKT Insights is constantly screaming about on Twitter: serious clubs should be investing in Africa.
Gidi’s club, MŠK Žilina, founded Žilina Africa in 2018, and it hasn’t taken long for that partnership to reap dividends. Their first sale of a player through this partnership came in February this year, when they sold Henry Addo for €500,000 to Maccabi Tel-Aviv.
They also have a striker in the first-team, 19-year-old Yves Erick Bile, who has hit the ground running with two goals in his first two appearances this season.
But let’s focus on Gidi.
Here are his Ball Retention and Pass Completion Ratios when facing high pressure (bearing in mind that the latter makes up a decent chunk of the former) compared to players in his own league and Serie A.
You’ll notice our friend Stanislav Lobotka right up there in the top right hand corner too. If we strip this back to just Slovakian midfielders, you’ll see how highly Gidi rates in his own league (alongside our friend Mahmudu Bajo).
Digging a little deeper… holy moly. I did a quick sweep of Twitter to see if anyone is linked with Gidi, and there’s nothing. Nada. Zero.
While Gidi’s ball retention numbers are extremely good, and his pass completion ratios metronomic, he does have the benefit of playing in a very good, high possession side (55% average in 2023/24). But playing in a two-man midfield, alongside the more attacking Mario Sauer, Gidi manages to not just be an excellent technical player, but also a decently damaging one when considering his role.
Firstly, he gets onto the ball a lot. And this leads to a lot of opportunities for him to look for runners.
Once again taking into account for his role, his passes also output a decent amount of passing threat. He measures up quite nicely to Sauer on a metric I’ve devised, which basically divides the threat a player's passes can generate per 100 passes, divided by the threat they actually do. This will give us a percentage: the percentage of threat that they create from the total amount threat they have the opportunity to pass to. I’ll call it the Threat Opportunity to Completion Ratio.
For an attempt at clarity: Threat Opportunity to Completion Ratio = threat created divided by opportunity to create threat.
Samuel Gidi’s score is: threat of runs to which a pass was completed per 100 pass opportunities of 0.44, divided by the threat of all opportunities to pass to runs per 100 pass opportunities of 1.3, which equals 0.35, or 35%.
For context, here are some Premier League midfielders with similar scores to Gidi in my metric: Bruno Guimarães (35%), Adam Wharton (36%), Pascal Groß (36%), and Jorginho (34%).
Some of the most impressive deep/deepish midfielder scorers I found were Douglas Luiz (39%), Kobbie Mainoo (40%), Moisés Caicedo (40%), and Boubacar Kamara (43%).
I like my metric. I think it’s a good way of calculating both how aggressive a player is in identifying pass opportunities that generate threat, and then executing them.
If I wanted to confuse you even more, I could also demonstrate how we can split these metrics up to show you whether he’s better at identifying high-threat opportunities, or better at executing passes to high threat opportunities (answer for Gidi: identifying).
Instead, let’s return to the actual point of this piece. For any Serie A team that wants to play high-possession football, Samuel Gidi is a very interesting low-cost option. He wants the ball, he can keep it expertly, and he is not an overly safe metronomic midfield piece either. He finds runners, he executes dangerous passes under pressure and high pressure at an excellent rate, and to cap it all off, he’s got some physical stats that look more than capable of holding up to a Serie A level.
3. THE NEXT ELITE CROATIAN PLAYMAKING MIDFIELDER
Welcome back, Luka Modrić.
It’s time. That Croatian midfielder I was so excited to talk about at the beginning? The one you’ve been clamouring to know as you’ve made your way through this mammoth piece? His name is Martin Baturina.
In my years of scouting, I haven’t seen many young players with this dominant a statistical profile in their own league.
I actually haven’t watched any of Baturina since last year’s Under-21 Euros, but from what I saw there, I was pretty confident he was going to look good in the stats - but even then I was surprised.
Let’s look at the foundational reason why he is so good, buoyed by his role playing for a dominant team within the Croatian top flight (Dinamo Zagreb have won 18 of the last 19 titles).
Here it is in plain sight, compared to other midfielders in the HNL. Baturina is able to avoid risks, by taking few difficult passes under pressure, while also unleashing huge volumes of dangerous passes. This is football played with the brain as much as the feet.
Playing in a team that keeps 60% of possession basically every season obviously helps here, especially in reducing the difficult pass numbers. However, that can also often have a downward pressure effect on Dangerous Pass Attempts per 100 Pressures, and yet Baturina still excels.
To give you a comparison, here are Pedri’s numbers from La Liga in 2022/23.
The result is an attacking monster, who is able to tear apart games as a passing threat, acting as the central creative hub of Dinamo’s team.
There are two ways we can present this. First, with his passing numbers to Runs and Dangerous Runs per 30 TIP compared to other midfielders in the HNL:
And also with his completed passes to dangerous runs per 30 TIP compared to his midfielder team-mates.
Interestingly, especially in the context of this piece, the only player ranking above him is Rijeka’s Toni Fruk, a 23-year-old ex-Fiorentina player who exploded last season with 15 assists in ~2,500 league minutes after arriving from Italy on a free transfer.
As I noted, I wanted to find some players for different Serie A budgets. Baturina is definitely one for the bigger clubs. For any who play a style reliant on keeping possession and need a ball-dominant player, Baturina is a superb option.
He is not just an elite facilitator but an efficient one, who already has years of experience playing in an elite team (relative to opposition of course). And he’s not an up-start either. He’s 21, capped by Croatia, and has played over 120 matches for Dinamo Zagreb.
And he completes our shopping basket. Let’s head for the checkout.
GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES
Serie A clubs are constantly battling to maintain their edge in a football finance world currently dominated by the Premier League.
While this gives English clubs an advantage, said advantage can be overcome by attracting the best players from developing markets.
This approach doesn’t need to be limited to the Balkans. I have already talked at length about the Slovakian market, while Switzerland is another obvious market that Serie A clubs should be looking to sink their teeth into. As we saw at the Euros, these nations are all slowly closing the gap to the continent’s elite. The pound-for-pound least talented teams at the Euros could boast Kvicha Kvaratskhelia and Georges Mikautadze, or Armando Broja and Kristjan Asllani, while a team with Martin Ødegaard and Erling Haaland didn’t even qualify for the tournament.
There is clearly something happening in many Balkan countries at a national sporting level. Slovenians are dominating the world of cycling. Three of the top four players in the NBA’s MVP voting were from Serbia, Slovenia and Greece. The #2 ranked tennis player in the world is from Serbia. The roughly 55 million people of Greece, Serbia, Croatia, Albania, Slovenia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Romania, and Bulgaria, combined for 14 golds, 11 silvers, and 18 bronzes at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
On the football front, the Balkan Supermarket is open for business, and at the checkout, Serie A teams need to stay at the front of the queue.
Thanks for reading that. We have plenty more SkillCorner pieces coming.
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I love articles like these. They get me plotting on how I can sign the players in fifa career mode
Really good stuff! Also thought Cvetkovic were quite good at that EURO (alongside Popovic), excited to see where he does end up.