One of the key applications of Goalimpact is player scouting. The selection of players depend on many factors and many of them are not covered by Goalimpact, so hiring a player just because he is rated high is not a good idea. However, if a player is rated low, then hiring him might not be a good idea even though he fits in other aspects. In short, Goalimpact is valuable in short listing players that scouting is worthwhile.
Particular difficult is the scouting of talents. The future of young players is particularly uncertain. It is difficult to compare two players of an age different as low as half a year because they are in different stages of the development. Many scouts fail to account for this and hence we observe the
Relative Age Effect. The difficulty is further increased by the lack of data availability. Hardly any youth league is tracked the same way as big professional soccer leagues. This makes it difficult to compare players with known peers.
By construction, Goalimpact ratings fully account for the relative age of players and, as heavily adjusted plus/minus scores, they run on very limited amount of data. This makes their application in talent scouting particularly valuable. To check this, we compare the top talents according to transfermarkt.de with the talents produced by Goalimpact.
We do this in both ways. Let's first look at Goalimpact's opinion on transfermarkt.de's picks of the top talents.
| TM-Rank | GI-Rank | Player | Team | GoalImpact | PeakGI | tm.de Value | Age | League | Games | Minutes |
| 1 | 119 | Luke Shaw | Southampton FC | 90,6 | 137,8 | 13 M€ | 18,6 | Premier League | 54 | 4403 |
| 2 | 203 | Timo Werner | VfB Stuttgart | 76,9 | 133,6 | 12 M€ | 17,9 | Bundesliga | 54 | 3915 |
| 3 | 31 | Max Meyer | FC Schalke 04 | 98,5 | 147,8 | 8 M€ | 18,3 | Bundesliga | 70 | 4711 |
| 4 | 118 | Will Hughes | Derby County | 93,6 | 137,8 | 7 M€ | 18,8 | Championship | 75 | 5990 |
| 5 | 5 | Yoeri Tielemans | RSC Anderlecht | 63,1 | 160,4 | 7 M€ | 16,8 | Eerste klasse | 22 | 1245 |
| 6 | 410 | Jonathan Tah | Hamburger SV | 75,0 | 129,4 | 6.5 M€ | 18,0 | Bundesliga | 45 | 3937 |
| 7 | 176 | Anthony Martial | AS Monaco | 83,1 | 134,8 | 5 M€ | 18,2 | Ligue 1 | 23 | 1356 |
| 8 | 145 | Tin Jedvaj | AS Roma | 84,5 | 136,0 | 5 M€ | 18,2 | Serie A | 20 | 1697 |
| 9 | 160 | Ángel Correa | San Lorenzo | 92,0 | 135,3 | 5 M€ | 18,9 | Primera Division | 34 | 2427 |
| 10 | 462 | Niklas Süle | 1899 Hoffenheim | 79,9 | 128,7 | 4.5 M€ | 18,4 | Bundesliga | 73 | 6151 |
| 11 | n.a. | Antonio Sanabria | | | | 4.5 M€ | | | | |
| 12 | 274 | Serge Gnabry | Arsenal FC | 84,8 | 132,0 | 4 M€ | 18,6 | Premier League | 28 | 1910 |
| 13 | 78 | Alen Halilovic | Dinamo Zagreb | 74,3 | 140,9 | 4 M€ | 17,6 | 1. HNL | 47 | 1984 |
| 14 | 396 | Balde Diao Keita | Lazio Roma | 86,3 | 129,6 | 4 M€ | 18,9 | Serie A | 18 | 969 |
| 15 | 130 | Adrien Rabiot | Paris Saint-Germain | 92,7 | 136,8 | 3.5 M€ | 18,8 | Ligue 1 | 61 | 3992 |
| 16 | n.a. | Alessandro Capello | | | | 2.5 M€ | | | | |
| 17 | 243 | Zakaria Bakkali | PSV Eindhoven | 79,3 | 132,6 | 2.5 M€ | 18,0 | Eredivisie | 29 | 1623 |
| 18 | 17 | Richairo Živkovic | FC Groningen | 77,5 | 151,6 | 2.5 M€ | 17,4 | Eredivisie | 27 | 970 |
| 19 | 1940 | Niklas Stark | 1. FC Nürnberg | 69,7 | 114,1 | 2 M€ | 18,8 | Bundesliga | 46 | 3515 |
| 20 | 28 | Andrija Živkovic | Partizan | 79,3 | 148,1 | 2 M€ | 17,6 | Super Liga | 13 | 735 |
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Luke Shaw is the most expensive talent
on tm.de. Is it because he is the best or
because he plays Premier League? |
Only two of the top twenty players were not covered by our rating. 17 of the 18 rated players are
predicted to be good enough for Champions League if the development is following the normal aging curve. The only exception is Niklas Stark from 1. FC Nürnberg that is not expected to be regular player on top European level in future.
To put the ratings into perspective, in total we have 2849 player U20 players in the database. So most of transfermarkt.de's picks are in the top 10% quantil according to Goalimpact's estimation of the talent. Given that the market value per se is not directly an estimate of talent, but also includes other factors such as age, position and current league, this is a very good fit. But 10% of 2849 is 285 players and not only 20, so the natural next question is 'Which players did transfermarkt.de miss?'.
Here are 20 top talents according to us. We didn't pick just the first twenty, but restricted the search to those with at least 900 minutes observed playing time to ensure that the prediction is not too uncertain. The given rank is the the position in the unfiltered list. As we want to recommend talents to interested teams, we anonymized the names of those players that are listed below 1 mio. Euro on transfermarkt.de. The lilac names were already on the list above. Andrija Živkovic would be on the list, too, but he didn't make the 900 minutes cut.
| Rank | Player | Team | GoalImpact | PeakGI | TM.de | League |
| 5 | Yoeri Tielemans | RSC Anderlecht | 63,1 | 160,4 | 7 M€ | Eerste klasse |
| 6 | | | 48,5 | 157,5 | n.a. | A-Junioren Bundesliga Süd/Südwest |
| 7 | | | 63,6 | 156,7 | n.a. | Segunda B |
| 9 | | | 61,0 | 156,4 | n.a. | Segunda B |
| 10 | Julian Brandt | Bay. Leverkusen | 92,7 | 154,8 | 1M€ | DE - Bundesliga |
| 12 | | | 88,9 | 154,4 | <1M€ | A grupa |
| 13 | | | 40,7 | 153,6 | n.a. | B-Junioren Bundesliga Süd/Südwest |
| 17 | Richairo Živkovic | FC Groningen | 77,5 | 151,6 | 2.5 M€ | Eredivisie |
| 19 | | | 67,9 | 151,3 | <1M€ | A grupa |
| 20 | | | 110,5 | 150,3 | <1M€ | AT - Bundesliga |
| 21 | | | 27,1 | 150,1 | n.a. | B-Junioren Bundesliga Süd/Südwest |
| 23 | | | 26,6 | 149,5 | n.a. | B-Junioren Bundesliga Nord/Nordost |
| 25 | | | 72,3 | 148,3 | <1M€ | Scottish Premiership |
| 30 | | | 67,5 | 148,0 | n.a. | VZ - Primera Division |
| 31 | Max Meyer | FC Schalke 04 | 98,5 | 147,8 | 8 M€ | DE - Bundesliga |
| 32 | | | 65,4 | 147,8 | n.a. | A-Junioren Bundesliga West |
| 33 | Kaan Ayhan | FC Schalke 04 | 108,0 | 147,7 | 500k€ | DE - Bundesliga |
| 34 | | | 95,7 | 147,5 | <1M€ | Superettan |
| 38 | | | 23,9 | 146,9 | n.a. | B-Junioren Bundesliga Nord/Nordost |
| 40 | | | 73,9 | 146,7 | <1M€ | AT - Bundesliga |
Many of the top talents are not having any price tag as they are either too young or play in a league that isn't really covered by transfermarkt.de. But even if we disregard the six youth players on this list, that leaves us with eleven young players playing in adult leagues with an predicted development that makes them interesting for top-tier clubs.
Given this insight, some prices are quoted surprisingly low on transfermarkt. We can't judge how reliable those prices are, but there seems to be a lot of value in looking for talents off the paved roads. Even players with experience in non-youth leagues that are predicted to be as good as Max Meyer are often listed as below 1 million Euros. Even if the real price is higher than what transfermarkt.de expects, that seem to be still many bargains.
If you are a manager or trainer of a football team and you are interested in us assisting you in scouting players, please drop us an email:
info@goalimpact.com
