"One of the most natural talents I've ever watched"
"One of the most natural talents I've ever watched"
SCOUT NOTES: your weekly download on the future of football, straight from Llew's brain.
SCOUT NOTES is back, and will be on a consistent basis.
After some internal discussion at HQ, aka a Discord chat, we’ve decided this will be the yin to Monday Night SCOUTED’s yang. While Jake Entwistle delves into the data on the weekend’s feature fixtures, Llew Davies will snoop around to find the more obscure tidbits about the lesser-known players.
In other words: every week, a subscription to SCOUTED will get you deep-dive context on the big games, every Monday, and an extensive look into the future of football, later in the week.
Also, SCOUT NOTES will be exclusive to our paid subscribers after this week. Llew’s brain will no longer be pillaged for free, we’ve had enough. Now you’ll have to pay to access his inner-most thoughts — and get the best youth football journalism on the internet as an added bonus. That’s very reasonable, we think. But you can still have Jake’s for free. We’ll allow it.
Anyway, this week…
Tyler Dibling arrives in style and Carlos Baleba breaks the game
The remarkable story of Richard Kone: from the Homeless World Cup to bagging against a Champions League team
“One of the most natural talents I’ve ever watched”
There is Arsène left in Arsenal, after all
Tyler Dibling is here, everybody
After making a glowing impression on a national TV stage against Manchester United a couple of weeks ago, Tyler Dibling scored his first Premier League goal in Southampton’s 1-1 draw against Ipswich Town over the weekend.
He did it with one of his typical back-foot touches, opening up the angle by letting the pass come across his body, eliminating the defender who gambled to intercept, then slotting in calmly.
The deft technical details of his game are great; they were also the standout aspect of his performance when I’ve watched him for England’s age-group teams. They're reminiscent of Ebere Eze to an extent, particularly in the way it looks so smooth and natural to him.
Then you have Russell Martin, the Southampton manager, saying that Dibling is the club’s 'best attacking threat' and 'can do things few else can'. Big words for a big talent, but Martin was quick to point out that this is just the start of a long season – let alone career – that will have ups, downs, twists and turns in abundance. "Development isn't linear" is one of our favourite quotes.
But watch out for more Dibling. This is just the beginning of his breakthrough.
The Basics of Baleba
For all the choreographed build-up patterns and pre-planned attacking circuits, football is often as simple as running hard, tackling hard and kicking the ball hard. Carlos Baleba does all of that and plenty more.
See his first Brighton & Hove Albion goal against Wolves in the EFL Cup from last week as an example.
While Wolves are trying to build out of their own box with a dot-to-dot pattern, Baleba is gobbling up the ground at speed before barging into the challenge, blowing up the first touch leaving his opponent face-down on the floor, then smacks a shot in from range.
Baleba is a game-breaker. He can sabotage your build-up play with brutish ball-winning and kill your press with sleek dribbles that turn into expansive carries from box to box. After a bit-part season under De Zerbi, coming in and out, he looks to be an important starter in Hürzeler’s side. I’m excited.
Non-league to Champions League… sort of
This is why the English football pyramid is an immense sporting institution.
Last night, 21-year-old Richard Kone scored against Aston Villa – a Premier League stalwart and current UEFA Champions League competitors – in the third round of the EFL Cup.
What's remarkable is that Kone started out in the 9th tier of English football (or step five of the non-league ladder, for those in the know) at Dagenham-based Athletic Newham, where he bagged a load of goals.
He scored 88 in 109 league non-league games before Wycombe came calling at the start of this year, and now he's scoring for a third-tier team against a top-tier giants.
To further expand on an already extraordinary story, Kone represented his native Côte d’Ivoire in the Homeless World Cup as a 17-year-old when it was staged in Cardiff back in 2019. He was living on the street after being disowned by his family when he came out as gay.
Such depth of talent – on top of all the history, and tradition, and community, and storylines, and entertainment – is what makes the English football pyramid great. We bang on about it loads for those reasons, and you really should get out and support your local non-league club(s) wherever you are in the country. You could be watching the next big thing.
Isaac Babadi, pure footballer
When I tuned into Fulham against PSV Eindhoven in the highly prestigious Premier League International Cup (Wikipedia page here for the phillistines who’ve never heard of it) on Tuesday, there were a couple of players I was really keen to watch. One was Tygo Land; the other was Isaac Babadi.
I wasn’t disappointed. Land was neat and tidy as the midfield connector, while Babadi grew into the game to showcase his abilities. This assist — an effortless, outside-of-the-boot chip — was one of his highlights.
Babadi is one of the most natural talents I’ve ever watched. Everything he does with the ball is incredibly fluid: the deftness of his close control, balance and awareness in tight areas, the shimmies and shoulder drops to deceive opponents, his vision and passing. He is the purest of footballers.
It’s a shame that neither of these two will likely play much first-team football at PSV this season, locked out by more experienced incumbents in their roles.
But both absolutely have the potential to step up when a couple of those are sold next summer, or even this coming winter. Babadi and Land can be the long-term replacements for Tillman and Joey Veerman – as long as they’re not pinched before that.
As an important Premier League International Cup aside, Reading — who’s sheer existence as a football club hangs in a desperate, seemingly doomed balance — managed to beat Ajax on Tuesday. That’s a remarkable result given the turmoil and anxiety that has overwhelemed the entire club this past week.
Losing the football club means losing the academy, which has developed a boat load of good players over the decades. In fact, it’s one of their academy graduates that’s keeping the lights on at the club currently. The £5 million windfall received from Michael Olise’s blockbuster sale to FC Bayern München is covering the running costs for now. For more, listen to this.
A proud night for the Arsenal academy
Last night was significant for no less than six emerging prospects at Arsenal.
Four teenagers made their first senior starts, with another two playing their first senior minutes, and a few more making the matchday squad. That’s some haul for a single game. Some will point that it was against third-tier Bolton Wanderers in the third round of the EFL Cup, but that doesn’t matter.
The roll of honour includes:
Full senior debut for Ethan Nwaneri
— First senior goal(s) for Ethan NwaneriFull senior debut for Myles Lewis-Skelly
Full senior debut for Jack Porter
Full senior debut for Josh Nichols
Senior debut for Maldini Kacurri
Senior debut for Ismeal Kabia
Do not underestimate the value an evening like that has on an entire academy system. Kids and coaches will be walking into Hale End today with an immense sense of pride, excitement and inspiration. They've just seen people that have been on their pathway achieve their dreams.
Furthermore, an untold amount of effort and dedication from innumerable people – parents, to friends, to teachers, and everybody else – have gone into making those special moments happen, however fleeting they were.
Arteta’s Arsenal needed a night like last night for their academy.
A Barclaysman’s legacy lives on
Who remembers Wigan Athletic legend and 181-time Honduras international Maynor Figueroa? Most of you should, unless you’re like, eight. Anyway, did you know that his son is coming through the Liverpool academy?
His name is Keyrol. He was born in Tegucigalpa in 2006, he’s a chunky striker, and is a regular youth international for the US, for whom he’s scored 10 goals in 19 games across multiple age groups and featured in last year’s FIFA U-17 World Cup. A true Barclaysman’s legacy lives on in the AXA Academy.
This is what a defender looks like in 2024
I feel like I’m treading on Jake’s Monday Night SCOUTED toes with some heatmap analysis here, but I think it’s interesting.
I’m a bit of a Sofascore nerd — I peruse pretty much every game, and I go into pretty much every player — and these are the heatmaps I see more and more from defenders of this day and age.
That’s Callum Doyle in Norwich’s 4-1 win against Watford. The Canaries signed him on loan from Manchester City this past summer. We tweeted this at the time:
We like it. Callum Doyle is a good fit for what a Thorup-coached Norwich will need from its centre-backs and wide defenders on both sides of the ball. It goes under the radar that he's played near enough 9,000 minutes in the EFL over the past three seasons. Good move all round.
Listed as a left-back on all the teamsheets, that heatmap would look very different five years ago: it would be stringed out on the flank, much tighter to the touchline. Now it’s a big, channel-concentrated blob that occupies the inside spaces. Doyle is a centre-back, and plays ‘left-back’ as a centre-back.
He’s there to provide progression in build-up play, prop up attacking sequences in the middle and final thirds, then offer a security service when the ball gets turned over – not bomb up and down the wing. Doyle was pretty much doing the exact same role for Enzo Maresca’s Leicester City last season.
My point? I don’t really have one, only that this is football in 2024. Browse through Sofascore this weekend and you will see similar heatmaps from full-backs in a lot of games at almost every level.
In case you missed it…
This is where we link to all the stuff that you may have missed on SCOUTED Notebook over the past week or so. Tuck in!
Our unrivalled coverage of Europe’s biggest youth competition is back with a bit of a bang. Myself, Stevie and Jake watched loads of games and wrote about loads of exciting talents. You won’t find anything like that anywhere else.
Another new name was added to our ever-expanding shortlist. This one is one of the best emerging talents in Japanese football at the moment: a regular in the J.LEAGUE and recently-capped senior international.
Shopping at the Balkan Supermarket, by Stephen Ganavas
Stevie has found a niche for himself writing some analytical epics with the help of unique SkillCorner data. This one highlights the value there is to be found in the Balkans, and he picks out three interesting prospects.
That’s that for SCOUT NOTES this week. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did and you want to read more of these over the coming weeks and months and years and decades, subscribe to SCOUTED Notebook now. As mentioned at the top, these will be going behind the paywall next week so don’t miss out.
Also, let me know your thoughts. Lead the discussion in the comments. G’wan.
I went to that Homeless World Cup in Cardiff. Don't think I got to see Kone that day but it's remarkable that someone playing in that tournament is in full-time pro football 5 years later. Great story 👏
Love Babadi so much