All aboard Baena: SCOUT NOTES, March 12th
All aboard Baena: SCOUT NOTES, March 12th
The free newsletter for scouting aficionados.
Right, totally honest, we don’t really have a little preamble for you this week so we’ll bounce straight into the newsletter. Some of you will be glad to cut the waffle, we’re sure. Anyway, on with the latest issue of SCOUT NOTES…
All aboard with Álex Baena
It is a constant surprise that we don’t see more hype about Álex Baena. The 22-year-old Villarreal prospect tops LaLiga’s assist charts with nine this season, playing in a hybrid wide role that sees him take advantage of both his hard-running and playmaking quality.
He popped up with an important equaliser for Villarreal in their 3-2 win over Betis this weekend, and continues to press his claim for a national team selection for Spain ahead of the Euros after being a key member of the U-21 side that reached the final of the EUROs in 2023.
Our friends at La Pausa have a great demonstration of the value that Baena brings to the table, combining the technical excellence we’ve come to expect from a Spanish midfielder with the desire to be direct and make the most of his athleticism when the moment presents itself.
Despite all this, there are very few rumours that seem to pop up linking him to a move elsewhere. For teams looking for a dynamic midfielder that can effectively function in so many different systems and phases of play, we’d be putting Baena right near the top of our list
Props to Pavlović
If you rattled back to March 2023 and asked the majority of Bayern fans who Aleksandar Pavlović is, you’d probably have got blank faces in return – and, you know what, fair enough.
This time last year, the München-born midfielder had only just made his debut for Bayern’s B team in the Regionalliga. He was by no means an anticipated prospect coming out of the academy. Those that follow the youth teams will have known him, sure, but even they probably didn’t think all that much of him. He’d never played at any underage level for Germany or Serbia. At first glance, he was pretty unremarkable.
We liked him when we watched him in last season’s UEFA Youth League; he had the basics, both physical and technical, that gave him a good chance to step up to senior football.
Fast forward twelve months and Pavlović is starting in crucial Champions League knockout games and just received his first call-up to the senior Germany squad. His standing within the Bayern squad has gradually grown throughout the campaign after being part of Thomas Tuchel’s preparations during pre-season.
It just goes to show that the unremarkable are often pretty remarkable. Quite often, the ones you think will make it don’t, and the ones you don’t do. What makes a good junior player doesn’t necessarily make a good senior player. You should always keep that in mind.
Sara-sational
Gabriel Sara is having a standout season in the Championship – just ask the
boys. Green Bar Scouting isn’t advised, but his FBRef profile makes for some pretty reading as well. He’s a footballer that can do pretty much everything and anything.
And that includes thwacking a side-winding volley into the roof of the net from the edge of the penalty area. His goal against Rotherham is pretty special. It has hints of Gareth-Bale-against-Stoke to it. The technique and timing is exceptional. He’ll be in the Premier League next season.
Jorrel Hato hunkers in
Young footballers often jump too high too soon nowadays, understandably swayed by grandiose promises, ‘exciting projects’ and life-changing wages. Jorrel Hato isn’t doing that.
He’s signed a new contract at Ajax that will keep him in Amsterdam for the foreseeable future. Arsenal were apparently in for him in a big way, but he’s decided to continue his development at his boyhood club, even if the state of affairs there isn’t as stable nor successful as it should be.
While he could probably play a squad role at a top-level team right now, another full season of starting games for Ajax would serve him well. He’s already played 4,100 minutes across 52 appearances there, and doing that again would put him in an even stronger position to make the jump to the elite next year.
And the elite is where he will belong before long, as Phil Costa underlined in his definitive SCOUTED50 profile:
Football Manager Corner
We (read: Llew) has sorted his problems with Steam, booted up a new save with the new winter update, and immediately searched up George Ilenikhena.
He wasn’t disappointed. The Nigeria-French teenager has been scoring goals for Royal Antwerp in real life and he will score plenty of goals on plenty of saves on the post-update Football Manager 2024.
Despite being 16 years old at the beginning of your saves, he could start for most top-flight teams. He’s a great option for big teams looking for that elusive back-up-then-starter striker, or the clubs that want to develop the best to make big profits. He’ll cost a bit, but Ilenikhena is worth it.
SCOUTED’s Reading List
Grace Robertson is always worth reading, and her latest piece on the demise of Paul Pogba is definitely worth reading. She sums up a mercurial career that pits success against disappointment.
Strasbourg are on the brink in Ligue 1, tumbling to relegation under the ownership of Todd Boehly’s BlueCo. This is an interesting read from Simon Johnson on the historic club’s first campaign as a Chelsea satellite.
This isn’t football, but it is about a teenage sensation: Jonathan Liew decries the brandification of prodigal dartsman Luke Littler.
