Dejan Kulusevski Prospect Scouting Report

Dejan Kulusevski may not be a name that rolls of the tongue, but he’s doing everything right in his early career to become a household name down the track.

In this scouting report, we’re going to look at the Swedish attacker and see how he stacks up as a prospect.

Before we deep-dive into his numbers though, check out some skills in this video below.

Again, apologies for the music in the video - as is tradition, you can’t have a soccer highlight video without a crappy techno song.

Player Profile

Name: Dejan Kulusevski

Age: 20 (Born 2000)

Position: Inside forward/winger

Club: Juventus

Rookie Year: Played on loan at Parma in the 19/20 season.

About The Player

Dejan Kulusevski is one of those in-vogue attacking players who plays on his opposite side. Meaning, he’s a left-footed player who plays on the right-hand side. Below is a heat map showing his positioning during his loan at Parma during the 19/20 season.

Before we get too far into the weeds here, there’s one thing I want to show you. Here are the leaders for goals and assists in Europe’s top five leagues by players under the age of 20.

As you can see, Kulusevski is in some pretty good company there.

My favorite part of that stat though is what happens when you take expected goals (xg) and expected assists into account (xa).

Basically, the expected number is what the total number of goals and assists should be. Sometimes players over-perform or under-perform their xg and xa. However, you’d expect that most players revert back a number that fits alongside their expected numbers.

As you can see, Sancho over doubled his expected goals and assists last year, where Kulusevski stayed just a touch over.

To put Sancho’s numbers into comparison, the very best players in the world like Lionel Messi will score at about 25% their expected goals - and Sancho was over 100% over.

Kulusevski is a really interesting player to watch actually, and somewhat full of contradictions. He’s pretty tall for an attacking midfielder at 188cm, but isn’t exactly great in the air - due to a poor vertical leap from what I can see.

He isn’t incredibly agile either compared to other people in his position, however at full speed he definitely does have impressive pace. This has even more impact when he’s carrying the ball. Kulusevski is a strong dribbler into space, and always has his head up looking for a pass.

Having said that though, he can also beat his man on the dribble - using body feints to move the defender. All in all, he attempted 7.39 dribbles per 90 minutes, which is top five in teenagers from the top five leagues in Europe.

His dribble completion rate was about 50%, which is slightly above average for his age and position but nothing spectacular. There are times where the ball can get stuck under his feet or he’ll hold on for too long.

Granted, Parma played a pretty direct style last season so that would have impacted a few numbers.

Because he plays on the right as a left-footer, his body position means a lot of his shorter passes are sideways or backwards into the center.

However, his forward passing, especially on the counter with a defense that isn’t full set is elite. Just check this beauty out.

Kulusevski is also great at looking for those little one-two passes, and through balls that can tear a back line up in a few seconds.

Like I said before, Parma played a pretty direct style last year, and his teammates weren’t at the level of Juventus (his parent club, where he’ll play this season), so look for his passing numbers to get better.

Seriously, some passes I saw him try, the person he was passing to didn’t even see it coming - you know when LeBron James dimes a shooter up and they don’t even know the pass is meant for them until it’s in their hands? That’s what it was like at times.

Off the ball he has a little room to improve, and I think that if he improves a few things, he can definitely play centrally behind a striker.

What’s Next For Dejan Kulusevski?

Like I mentioned above, Dejan Kulusevski is back with Juventus for the 20/21 season - and at the time of writing, they haven’t played a competitive game this season under new manager, Andrea Pirlo, so it’ll be interesting to see where he fits.

Louis Suarez is supposed to be joining Juvenus this season, which would have really eaten up a lot of Kulusevski’s potential minutes. However, there’s some talk that the move may not happen. It’s transfer season - who knows what to beleive?!

Regardless, Kulusevski will get some game time at Juve this season. It’s a pretty packed schedule and Juventus will want to do well in all competitions.

Plus he’s got Ronaldo’s seal of approval too - which helps.

"He is a great talent," Ronaldo said of Kulusevski after a UEFA Nations League match, as quoted by juvefc.com.

"He will help us to win and achieve incredible things.

"I really like to see him, he has a great potential, and he's an excellent player. I hope to play with him and score a lot of goals together."

He’s definitely one to keep an eye on this season. At only 20 years old, he’s certainly got time on his side - and if he can cement a starting spot over the next season or two, he’ll likely be seen as one of the guys they’ll rebuild that squad around.

Dejan Kulusevski for Card Collectors

I’m writing this with a heavy heart because Dejan Kulusevski was not on the checklist for the Euro 20 Select Card checklist.

Although, this isn’t the first time he’s been snubbed internationally. Just check out what Zlatan said after Kulusevski wasn’t named in Sweden’s starting lineup in a recent friendly…

"What a f*cking joke. Further proof. Incompetent people in the wrong positions that suffocate Swedish football."

Yikes.

The truth is, Kulusevski is only 20 and should get regular gametime for a top club this season. He’s already shown he can perform well at a lower club (sorry Parma, but this isn’t 1998) when he was the main attacking catalyst. So I’m intrigued to see how he fits in on the big stage.

Regardless, Kulusevski does have some cards out on the market. His rookie club cards are from his loan stint at Parma in the 19/20 season. There are also some stickers out there too for both club and country. You can find his rookie cards on eBay here.

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