🚨 Emergency Broadcast: Brighton sign Yalcouyé
Another SCOUTED favourite lands on the south coast.
It may be past 10pm on a Friday night, but Brighton & Hove Albion have just announced the signing 18-year-old Malick Junior Yalcouyé.
Our Scouting Editor, Llew Davies, has been following Yalcouyé with a keen eye for a while. Earlier this year, we added him to The Shortlist, our collection of players to watch. We don’t mean to brag, but we’re good at this.
So, as a long-time SCOUTED reader, you’re well ahead of the game. Right? No worries if not — we’ve got the juice. Here’s a recap, and the lowdown on yet another Brighton coup.
In this Broadcast:
Get up to speed on Malick Yalcouyé - from a scout who’s watched him
What to expect from the young Malian midfielder
What we think he’ll bring to Brighton
We’re trying something new with this Emergency Broadcast, so we’ve made it free to read. Please subscribe if you find it useful — we’ll have our fingers on the trigger all summer.
THE HEADLINES
A brief summary of his career to date and current relevance.
Born in 2005, Malick Junior Yalcouyé emerged from the esteemed ASEC Mimosas academy in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire — similarly to Karim Konaté.
He joined IFK Göteborg in Sweden earlier this year and has exploded into senior football as a regular starter and the Allsvenkan’s brightest prospect of the 2024 season.
He’s a dynamic, all-action midfielder — especially prolific at ball-winning and dribbling, with technical talent and progressive qualities.
He was linked with Belgian and Dutch clubs, as well as Liverpool, after playing fewer than 500 minutes in European football.
He moves to Brighton for a reported €10 million fee, a record sale for IFK.
THE SCOUTED TAKE
A bitesize insight into the player and transfer, by Llew Davies.
What sort of player is Yalcouyé?
All-action is probably overused to describe midfielders, but it’s definitely applicable to Yalcouyé. The little Malian is a bundle of non-stop energy between both boxes that contributes to every phase of the game.
One minute he’ll be pinching the ball back in his own half and driving into space, the next he’ll be skipping past a full-back down the wing or arriving into the box to get on the end of a cross. You name it, he does it.
His tackling and dribbling are the standout aspect of his game currently. He uses his compact stature and long legs (an unusual but effective combination) to wedge himself underneath players and pinch the ball away. Then he likes to pierce through gaps as a dribbler, equipped with the burst to separate from defenders.
His technical on-ball basics are pretty sound, if sometimes inconsistent. His touch and close control needs to be tighter but he makes makes good angles to receive passes, can open up with his first touch, and play with a bit of tempo to move the ball through a defensive line as a passer.
Why do Brighton want him?
Because they’re Brighton. This is what they do. Yalcouyé is the exact type of profile that they’ve made a fortune off in recent years: the up-and-coming prospect that is in between obscurity and popularity. He’s the hip prospect on the market, ready to be nurtured into the mainstream.
This is a move with the future in mind. He doesn’t have the physicality to make an immediate impact in the Premier League, but he has the skillset to do so once he fills into his frame.
Yalcouyé’s skillset is coveted because it combines speed and sharpness with ball-winning and press-escaping abilities, as well as promising progressive qualities. Brighton are taking a bet on his capacity to become a more rounded and robust athlete to impose that skillset on Premier League games in a year, or more likely two or three.
How will he fit in at Brighton?
Brighton are keen to loan out the prospects they purchase. Moisés Caicedo is a prime example: signed from Independiente del Valle, they kept him around for six months, then sent him to Belgium for half a season before bringing him back, integrating him into the team, then starting him the following campaign. He went on to excel and earn a £100+ million move to Chelsea.
I expect Yalcouyé to follow a similar path — going out on loan to a trusted partner club (not Royale Union Saint-Gilloise) in Belgium, the Netherlands or elsewhere — before returning to Brighton and being bedded into the first-team fold if his development has gone to plan.
Read more about Yalcouyé…
We added the Malian to The Shortlist a couple of months ago, where he joins the likes of Hamidou Makalou and Riccardo Calafiori. See below for more.
All in all, Yalcouyé to Brighton is pretty much classic Brighton. That’s what you should take away from his Emergency Broadcast.
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