This is The Shortlist — the quick, digestible way to get to know football’s hottest property, as told by the scouts who’ve watched them.
Stephen Ganavas is our Analysis Editor here at SCOUTED, and he’s also an Italian football maniac that is obsessed with the next generation of calcio. He’s Pafundi-pilled after watching the diminutive attacker at the U-19 EUROs.
SCOUTED: I’ll start with my usual question. Why should people be excited about Simone Pafundi?
STEPHEN: Well, if you’re a Manchester United fan, you should be more excited than the average person.
Six months ago, Pafundi was signed by FC Lausanne-Sport in Switzerland, on loan with a £15m buy option that will, I assume, be exercised in January. Lausanne are entirely owned by INEOS, so there’s clearly a wink-wink, nudge-nudge from their head honchos; Lausanne’s previous record transfer was €2.5m for another SCOUTED favourite, Zeki Amdouni, so they clearly have bigger plans for Pafundi - whether that ends up being at United or OGC Nice or elsewhere. Regardless, a succession plan is prepared.
The talent certainly merits that fee. He made his senior Italy debut in 2022 as a 16-year-old and became their youngest player in a hundred years or something; he’d made his Serie A debut with Udinese before that; last year he was a finalist with the Italian team at the U-20 World Cup; this year he’s been absolutely outrageous, both for Lausanne and in the U-19 EURO qualifying campaign (the tournament proper is currently ongoing - ed). He’s just gone to another level in 2024, and I’ve followed him for a while.
Whether you want him to sit deep and set the tempo, or invade the final third and score goals, he’s really useful in many different ways. He’s such an exciting watch from so many different perspectives: dribbling, creating, goalscoring.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to SCOUTED Notebook to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.