Transfer spending may be restricted to the summer and January windows, but planning happens year-round. Recruitment is now a long-term game: complex, competitive, and difficult to master.
History has shown this to be the case, with approximately 50% of signings failing to meet expectations ('How to win the Premier League', Graham 2023) and many struggling to secure consistent playing time during their first two seasons.
The majority of clubs are now using data in one form or another to reduce the risk of costly mistakes, with forward-thinking clubs looking for more and more specificity in their profiling to find exactly what they need.
Game Intelligence provides unprecedented granularity and depth, helping clubs pinpoint specific player profiles that deliver the technical and tactical elements they’re looking for - on and off the ball, in and out of possession.
In this series, we're adopting the approach of a club, identifying and analysing specific player roles using the most unique metrics available from our Game Intelligence data.
The era of accommodating luxury playmakers or midfield “passengers” who contribute little out of possession is, for the most part, a thing of the past at the elite level. Today’s attacking midfielder is expected to be more than just a creator; they must play their part in the team’s defensive gameplan like everyone else.
The problem is that we’ve lacked the tools to properly measure this side of the game. Traditional defensive stats like blocks, tackles, and duels capture isolated moments but miss the broader context.
If a player applies pressure to the ball carrier and forces them backwards or sideways, prevents a counterattack, or blocks off a dangerous passing option, they’ve done their job for the team, but they haven’t won a duel or made an interception.
In fact, less than 3% of defensive engagements result in a direct regain (SkillCorner, 2023), and most “pressure” stats are still based on proximity to the ball, with no insight into pressing quality or effectiveness.
Until recently, this additional defensive context was largely invisible in the data. But with Game Intelligence, we can finally evaluate the quality of a player’s defensive output beyond challenging for the ball and define the best pressing players.
In our previous Contextual Scouting report, we explored how the Modern Playmaker unlocks defences through movement, progression, and decision-making on the ball. In this follow-up, we flip the perspective to evaluate which of these players gives us what we need out of possession.
As before, we apply a role-specific scouting framework, starting with the player profile we’re looking for and translating those football traits into measurable metrics. With that foundation, our goal is to identify the attacking midfielders who defend with the same purpose they create.
The profile we’re looking for is:
"...A pressing midfielder who defends actively, with speed and intensity, in the high block and disrupts opposition build-up by forcing them backwards and cutting off passing lanes.…"
We’ll analyse midfielders from the ‘Big Five’ European leagues; however, as we’re switching from in-possession to out-of-possession, we’re exploring a new set of metrics from Game Intelligence: On Ball Engagements (OBE).
On Ball Engagement consists of a variety of defensive events:
We also capture the phase of play in which these defensive metrics occur, putting these defensive actions in context - for example, how a centre-back engages in a high line vs. in a low block, or a centre-forward’s ability to lead a high press vs quickly retreat into defensive shape.
We’ll also combine these defensive metrics with Physical Data so we can identify dynamic athletes who really impact the game with the speed and intensity of their pressing.
Volume: "...defends actively in the high block ...”
In this analysis we aim to identify midfielders who are active out of possession in the team’s first line of defence. Specifically, we're looking for players who consistently press from the front, while also maintaining defensive discipline in a medium block.
To find this versatile profile in the data, we’ve isolated midfielders’ on ball engagements in both high and medium blocks. In the scatter plot below, we’ve mapped players based on two key metrics: their pressing engagements p30 in a high block (as part of a pressing chain) on the y-axis, and their combined total of pressing and pressure actions p30 in the medium block on the x-axis:
Phil Foden stands out as one of the most active pressers, ranking first for pressing engagements in the high block and third for combined pressures in the medium block. In the medium block, Unaí Gómez (Athletic Club) leads the way in combined pressing and pressure actions. Familiar names like Martin Ødegaard, Cole Palmer, and Kevin De Bruyne also appear prominently. All three play for teams that frequently defend high up the pitch, so their presence here is no surprise.
More unexpected but noteworthy names include Johann Lepenant (Nantes), Juanlu Sánchez (Sevilla), and Omari Hutchinson (Ipswich), who also show strong pressing tendencies despite playing for teams with different defensive setups.
To provide context around team styles of play, we've highlighted a selection of the teams above to show which defensive phases they spend the most time in:
We now have a sense of which players frequently engage in pressing actions in the high and medium block, but quantity doesn’t necessarily lead to quality. With Game Intelligence, we can go a step further and use pressing outcomes as a measure of quality and effectiveness.
Effectiveness: “...disrupts opposition build-up by forcing them backwards and cutting off passing lanes...”
There are two primary ways in which we can measure how On Ball Engagements affect the ball carrier. One goal of pressing in a high block can be to hinder progression, with intense pressure on the ball carrier to force them to play backwards or sideways. Some clubs, on the other hand, prefer their #10 to play more of a containing role cutting off the ball carrier’s ability to play line-breaking passes.
In the scatter plot below, we highlight midfielders with the highest share of On-Ball Engagements in the high block that force the opponent backwards (x-axis) and affect potential line breaks (y-axis).
Note that total on-ball engagements include not only pressing and pressure engagements, but also counter-press and recovery press engagements, giving us a more complete picture of their overall defensive engagements.
We’ve also applied a filter threshold of at least 10 OBE Engagements in High Block Per 30mins OTIP (“Other Team In Possession”) to avoid players with low counts skewing the sample:
The visualisation above highlights the midfielders in our sample that are most effective at forcing opponents backwards or affecting line-breaking passing options.
Players in the top left, top right and bottom left quadrants are all recording high percentages of success in their On Ball Engagements, but the outcomes they’re achieving are different. Warren Zaire-Emery, for example, in the bottom right ,excels at forcing the play backwards while Juanlu Sanchez is the most effective player in our sample when it comes to affecting potential line breaking passing options. Finally, midfielders positioned in the top-right quadrant record high percentages for both outcomes.
The vertical dotted line represents the average percentage of high block engagements that force the opponent backwards. As our profile calls for more aggressive, direct pressure, we’ve highlighted the players ranking above average for this metric - let’s call them “hunters”.
The bar chart below refines our list of hunters by including only midfielders with at least 10% of their high block on-ball engagements resulting in the opponent being forced to play backwards:
Interestingly, this metric highlights players from less prominent clubs. Our leading hunter is Isi Palazón (Rayo Vallecano) with 15.2%, and just below him are two players from Bologna, which could point to a well-coordinated pressing system at the club. Other standouts are Yann Gboho (Toulouse), Paul Nebel (Mainz) and Bilal El Khannouss (Leicester City), who also ranked highly in our Playmaker Index, showing their impact on both sides of the ball.
While disrupting progression may be the main priority for our profile, others may prioritise winning the ball back in the opposition half.
With that in mind, our next bar chart focuses on identifying which of our hunters that also excel as Ball Winners or “stealers”. We do this by measuring the share of on-ball engagements in high block that lead to direct regains of possession or clear disruption of the opponent’s play:
Eren Dinkçi, the 23-year-old attacking midfielder from Freiburg, stands out as the most effective ball-winner among our hunters - with 19% of his on-ball engagements resulting in either a regain or disruption of the opponent’s play. Next on the list, ranking highly again, is top-10 Playmaker Bilal El Khannouss.
So far, we’ve added an important layer of context to pressing by identifying players who press effectively, but pressing isn't just about structure or awareness; it’s also about intensity. We’re looking for a player with the physical profile to close down opponents at speed, to deny opponents time and space and force mistakes.
Intensity: "...defends actively with speed and intensity…”
How can we further differentiate between our pack of hunters to identify who engages the ball carrier with the intensity we’re looking for?
We can measure pressing intensity by benchmarking players based on their ability to perform pressing and pressure engagements at HSR and Sprint speed.
The bar chart below ranks our hunters by their total pressing and pressure actions performed at HSR and Sprint speed:
Martin Ødegaard stands out as a relentless presser in our analysis, recording 148 pressing/pressure engagements at HSR speed and 38 at sprint speed over the 2024/25 season. Only Justin Kluivert comes close to matching him in terms of total high-intensity volume, underlining Ødegaard’s exceptional work rate off the ball.
We can convert these numbers into percentages, revealing:
22.7% of Ødegaard’s pressing and pressure actions were performed at high-speed running or at sprinting intensity - the highest share among all midfielders in the top 5 leagues with over 500 recorded pressing and pressure events throughout the season.
The bar chart below ranks our selected hunters by their share of pressing and pressure events performed at high intensity. This is more representative as minutes played affects the count chart above - with more playing time allowing more opportunities to press.
While Ødegaard still ranks on top for share of high-intensity pressing and pressure engagements, we can notice that Justin Kluivert moves down the list where 15% of his pressing activities are performed at HSR and Sprint Speed.
The final element of our physicality profile is explosiveness. With so many physical actions taking place within tight spaces, this short area quickness is just as important as top line speed. We can assess our hunters’ explosiveness by looking at the unique acceleration metrics available within SkillCorner Physical Data: Explosive Accelerations:
The ‘Count’ metrics will give an indication of our hunters’ ability to perform explosive actions repeatedly, enabling us to identify the hunters with the physical capacity to press relentlessly. We chose to place the hunters in the same scatter plot as other advanced midfielders that scored above the 80th percentile for On ball engagements in the high block:
The ‘Time to’ metrics, on the other hand, show the ability to reach those speeds quicker than other players, giving us the hunters with the burst to close down opponents quickly in tight spaces:
Among our hunters, three players stand out: Yann Gboho, Justin Kluivert, and Bilal El Khanouss. They all demonstrate high totals of explosive accelerations per 90, showcasing their ability to perform repeated sprints. On top of that, Gboho and Kluivert rank among the top five in our sample for time to reach sprint speed – in company with elite playmakers such as Florian Wirtz, Cole Palmer, and Jude Bellingham.
The big outlier, however, is Omari Hutchinson. Despite playing for Ipswich, a team that spends most of its time in a low block, he still ranks top for total explosive accelerations and within the top five in our sample for sprint count per 90. Not only that, Hutchinson is the joint second most explosive player in our sample, together with Xavi Simons, averaging just 1.36 seconds to reach sprint speed.
While different clubs may prioritise these physical elements differently within their versions of this profile - perhaps depending on the level within their league competitions - we can certainly use them as a reference point for our hunters’ ability to impact the game with their physicality.
Contextual Scouting: Combining Data-Driven Profiles In and Out of Possession
This exploration of the hunter profile is another example of how Game Intelligence enables scouts and analysts to move beyond generic metrics to find exactly what they’re looking for.
With the flexibility to combine and tailor metrics, clubs can craft precise, role-specific profiles and gain greater confidence that the players identified will meet both the tactical and physical demands of their system.
If you read our previous analysis on The Modern Playmaker, some of the names in this analysis will be familiar from the Playmaker Index. Players that rank highly in both analyses excel both in and out of possession, and may have the complete profile we’re looking for.
In our next piece of the contextual scouting series, we will look to combine both profiles to find complete players in other markets and team-specific scenarios and contexts.