Contextual Scouting: Next Breakout Stars In Scandinavia

Every season, a handful of players break through from leagues outside the ‘Big Five’. They arrive under the radar, adapt quickly, and become key contributors - sometimes even turning into major transfers within a year or two. So how do some clubs spot these players early, while others miss out?

Talent alone isn’t enough. To succeed, a player needs to match a team’s style, system, and role expectations - in possession and out of possession. That’s where Contextual Scouting comes in.

With this approach, the goal is simple: help clubs find players who match specific tactical and stylistic needs both in and out of possession. Not just “good” players, but the right ones - increasing the certainty around these key investments. The second part of effective scouting, and what we want to focus on here, is identifying hidden talent in emerging and ‘untapped’ leagues and markets that can generate high resale value.

In this piece, we combine the two frameworks introduced in our earlier articles - the Playmaker Index and the Pressing Index - to create a Total Index Score. This score captures a player’s overall impact on the game by evaluating their creative and defensive contributions in tandem, offering a more complete scouting lens.

We’ll go through some realistic scenarios for clubs in different situations to show how these scores can add precision and more certainty in recruiting for key positions.

We’re focusing on emerging markets; places where quality often goes unnoticed, and where value can be found before prices skyrocket. Our first stop is Scandinavia, using data from the 2024/25 season, before expanding to Asia and South America.

Club Context: Champions League Club with a Possession-Dominant Style 

We are a title-chasing club in one of Europe’s “Next Three” leagues, which have become a launchpad for players on their way to the very top of European football:

• 🇧🇪 BEL1 Pro League
• 🇳🇱 NED1 Eredivisie
• 🇵🇹 POR1 Primeira Liga

We occasionally compete in the Champions League, but remain vulnerable to our best players being signed by clubs from Europe’s top five leagues. Our ambition is clear: compete for trophies every season while developing players capable of making the leap to Europe’s elite, and generating substantial profit for the club in the process. 

We are a club that plays a possession-oriented game, dominating the ball and dictating tempo, while also pressing with intensity and organisation in both high and medium blocks.

For our style of play, we’re targeting a young playmaker capable of operating as both a No. 10 and a No. 8. In short, we’re after a two-way midfielder with the creativity to unlock defenses and the work rate to contribute both in and out of possession.

So, where might we uncover a player like this?

In recent years, Scandinavia has emerged as a breeding ground for top-tier talent, producing technically refined and tactically intelligent profiles. A common thread in many of these players’ journeys is the step-by-step nature of their development. Rather than jumping straight to a top-five league, they often take an intermediate step, typically to leagues like the Netherlands, Belgium or Portugal - where they can secure consistent minutes, grow in a competitive but supportive environment, and prove themselves before making the leap to a major European club. However, some clubs from the ‘Big Five’ leagues have already started to take notice, securing talent early in this market before prices increase. 

Below is a snapshot of the development pathways some Scandinavian players have taken in recent years:

The chart showcases a selection of players - some who have already established themselves, and others identified as high-potential prospects - and the region continues to produce exciting young talent beyond those highlighted here.

In the following section, we narrow our focus to young midfielders or playmakers, using data from last season in Scandinavia to highlight those who stand out statistically and show high potential.

Methodology

To make our analysis and player filtering as detailed as possible, we have combined the Playmaker Index and the Pressing Index into a single Total Index Score. The visual below serves as a reminder of the metrics that make up each index.

As part of our analysis, we have manipulated the weightings to see how each category shapes the overall score and influences the ranking of players.

Our weighting reflects the dual demands we place on an 8/10 hybrid in a modern pressing team. In possession, Movement (40%) and Finish (40%) are prioritised because our playmaker must constantly find space between lines and then turn those positions into decisive actions in the final third. Progression (20%) remains important, but in our structure Forward Momentum and Carries are more evenly distributed across the team, so we value the connective role of the playmaker more than raw progression volume. 

Out of possession, we mirror that distribution by giving equal weight to pressing Volume (40%) and Effectiveness (40%). The player must repeatedly join pressing chains and actively disrupt opposition build-up and progression, not just run for running’s sake. Intensity (20%) adds value through explosiveness and burst, but is secondary to overall pressing output and end outcomes.

This distribution ensures the Total Index Score highlights profiles who can dictate tempo and unlock defences while also sustaining our pressing identity. It builds directly on the insights from the Modern Playmaker and Pressing Playmakers analyses, where availability, final-third decision making, and pressing impact were identified as the defining qualities of the role we are targeting. 

The outcome is a ranking of midfielders best suited to our tactical demands; breaking down teams who deploy a low block and win the ball back by applying effective pressure in the high block. 

The bar chart below ranks midfielders in Scandinavia under 26 years old by their Total Index Score:

The top performer in our Total Index Score is 18-year-old Sverre Nypan. Manchester City secured one of Europe’s most promising young talents before his price tag and market value skyrockets. Nypan has now joined Middlesbrough on loan, a move that should expose him to the physicality of English football, and the minutes needed to prepare for a future role in City’s first team. If he succeeds, the upside is significant - both in terms of potential long-term integration into the senior squad, but also with limited risk with good potential resale value as well. 

‍Scouting Sverre Nypan

To gain deeper insight into a player identified through our data, we can turn to heatmaps from the 2024 Norwegian Eliteserien season to help illustrate his playing style and movement patterns. 

While traditional heatmaps focus on event-based stats like passes in possession or tackles and interceptions out of possession, we’ve gone a step further by splitting Nypan’s actions into four distinct heatmaps based on SkillCorner event types. This allows us to paint a picture of Nypan’s off the ball actions as well: 

Nearly half of Nypan’s total events come from making himself available as a Passing Option, while only 14.1% fall under traditional ‘In Possession’ metrics like touches or passes. 

The On Ball Engagement heatmap is particularly interesting, showing that Nypan defends deeper in his own half, ticking our boxes as a hybrid 8/10 profile rather than a ‘luxury’ #10. 

As seen in the heatmaps, the left half-space is where Nypan mainly operates - It’s the zone where he most often picks up possession and creates danger, underlining his role as a connector and creator in that channel. Regarding Nypan’s passing options, the touch map (below left) highlights all instances where he received the ball in space (at least 3 meters to the closest opponent at reception).

Building on this, we can also isolate his off-ball runs. Nypan’s off-ball runs heatmap (15% of his events) show a clear tendency to push into the penalty area, suggesting a box-crasher profile. Within this, he often targets the cut-back space, as highlighted by his high number of cross-receiver runs around the penalty area. As Scouted summed up in a previous piece about Secrets of Scandinavia: He makes a lot of runs, a lot of those runs are dangerous and they result in shots and goals for his team.

Breakdown of Next Breakout Stars

We can take our analysis of Nypan and the other young profiles a step further by breaking down their percentile scores in each category within the two indices.

The category breakdown tells us even more. Nypan’s all-round profile fits perfectly with our game model: he is the only player who excels across all categories, with the one exception being Effectiveness, where he falls just below the 80th percentile. That said, a score above the 70th percentile in Effectiveness is already quite strong, especially considering how demanding this category is. It combines four distinct metric components: on ball engagements in high block which force opponents backwards, affect line break, leads to disruption, and leads to regains - which makes it harder for most playmakers to get a high percentile score here. 

Other players ranked highly in our index have already made the move to the ‘Next Five’ leagues. Håkon Evjen moved early to AZ Alkmaar before returning to Bodø/Glimt, where he played a key role in their run to the Europa League semi-final. In fact, the Norwegian serial winners will play in the Champions League for the first time this season.  

Albert Grønbæk earned a move to Rennes, had a short loan in the Premier League, and will play for Genoa in Serie A this season. Same goes for Yuito Suzuki who delivered goals and assists at Brøndby which earned him a move to Freiburg in the Bundesliga.

Of the younger prospects in the top positions, Mario Dorgeles has moved to Braga, Malick Yalcouye has joined Brighton (loaned to Swansea), and Victor Froholdt has been snapped up by Porto. 

The Shortlist

Of the players still available, we’ve picked out exciting youngsters, Thomas Jørgensen and Noah Nartey (both 19 years old). Below, we have visualized and compared their run profiles using our off-the-ball radar charts, alongside Nypan for reference.

Jørgensen’s off-the-ball profile stands out, as he shows a wide variety in his run types, with relatively high values across all categories. The most interesting insight here is that Jørgensen actually scores higher than Nypan for cross receiver runs P30 TIP, while also registering strong numbers for dropping-off runs and coming-short runs, which are more prominent in build-up play for midfielders. This can suggest that Jørgensen takes on greater responsibility in his team's build-up, while also showing the capacity and intent to get into the opponent’s box. 

When we link this with his pressing volume - as a proxy for work rate - we begin to see promising signs of a true two-way midfielder emerging, which fits the profile we are looking for.

Contextual Scouting: From Data to Decision

Ultimately, who we target depends on our needs and who we see as having the highest potential. Jørgensen leads our shortlist for Pressing Volume, while Nartey sits joint-top with Nypan for Progression. Whichever route we take, our aim would be to develop the player’s other qualities to create a more complete profile and eventually sell him on for a profit. 

If we were to choose one based purely on the data, we would be inclined towards Jørgensen, as he ranks highly in more categories than Nartey and fits the creative profile we’re looking for. His high pressing volume is a major plus, helping offset his weaker explosiveness score. That said, we know that our scouts and sporting director will want to take a look at both players on video (or perhaps in person) to get a full picture and come to our decision.

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