Before last season, you probably didn't know who Kaoru Mitoma was. You'd maybe heard of Moisés Caicedo. And while you'd definitely seen Martin Odegaard play before, you also probably weren't sure what the big deal was about this slender attacking midfielder who couldn't really run fast, wasn't asked to drop deep to defend much, and was only able to combine for 11 non-penalty goals and assists across 32 starts.
(OK, fine, that extremely specific third example is just me. It's what I thought.)
Well, before this season, Mitoma is now quite clearly one of the best wingers in the Premier League. Caicedo seems likely to eventually change teams for a transfer fee that continues to inch up near $100 million. And Odegaard is simply one of the best midfielders in the world.
All three of them had breakout years in 2022-23, which prompts the question: who might be next? Who are the soon-to-be-stars of the 2023-24 Premier League season?
So with the campaign kicking off Friday night as Manchester City visit Burnley, I've identified five different kinds of breakouts and selected a potential name (or two) for each one.
The "We Know You'll Be a Superstar One Day" Breakout
As I've written countless times, "minutes played at a young age" is just about the best predictor of future success for a professional soccer player. If a manager -- the majority of whom are risk-averse, trying not to get fired -- thinks you're good enough to warrant top-level minutes as a teenager, then there's likely some set of skills that's going to develop into something that makes you a productive pro. It doesn't really even matter that much how good you are when you're out there; all that matters is that you're out there in the first place.
However, if you want to find a star -- or even a super-star -- I think you need that playing-time-at-a-young-age to be combined with high-level performance at a young age.
In the Premier League last season, four teenagers featured in at least 800 minutes of game time. Top of the list, by far, were 19-year-old Romeo Lavia's 2,230 minutes for Southampton, followed by Wilfried Gnonto's 1,348 minutes for Leeds. What do those two guys have in common? Both of their teams were relegated.
At 18, Rico Lewis played 903 minutes for Man City, briefly became the next João Cancelo, then was removed from the lineup right before City took over the world. They're all great prospects; it's just unclear how much any of them contribute to winning right now.
That's not true about our two picks here, though: Brighton duo Evan Ferguson and Julio Enciso. In his age-17 season (defined by your age on Aug. 1) last year, Ferguson played 950 minutes, while Enciso featured in 806 during his age-18 season. Across those stretches, Ferguson put up 0.76 non-penalty goals+assists per 90 minutes, while Enciso came in at 0.67, a rate which included the Premier League's goal of the year:
Those are very limited samples of game time, of course, but over a full season, Ferguson would've ranked sixth in the league for per-minute attacking production -- between Mohamed Salah and Harry Kane -- while Enciso would've ranked 11th, right behind Marcus Rashford. Both players were slightly ahead of their underlying numbers, but not significantly so. A traditional-ish center-forward, Ferguson rarely turns over the ball, which is rare for a player his age, while Enciso ranked in the 99th percentile for shots attempted and successful dribbles for attacking midfielders/wingers across Europe in his limited sample of matches.
I don't think we're quite at the point where either one becomes a play-every-game starter for Brighton yet -- they'll be a combined 39 years old by the end of this season -- but I'd expect both of them to play more than 1,000 league minutes this season for a team with legitimate top-four aspirations, and possibly become two of the hottest prospects across all of Europe heading into next summer.
The "Shots Finally Went In" Breakout
Across Europe's Big Five leagues last season, there were seven players who played at least half of their team's minutes and averaged at least four shots per 90 minutes:
1) Victor Osimhen, Napoli: 4.63
2) Kylian Mbappé, PSG: 4.60
3) Darwin Núñez, Liverpool: 4.46
4) Karim Benzema, Real Madrid: 4.37
5) Lautaro Martínez, Inter Milan: 4.37
6) Robert Lewandowski, Barcelona: 4.24
7) Lionel Messi, PSG: 4.09
Here's how those same players stacked up, by non-penalty goals:
Osimhen: 24
Mbappe: 26
Núñez: 9
Benzema: 12
Martinez: 20
Lewandowski: 23
Messi: 16
So, most of the best attackers in the world... and then also Núñez?
For now -- at least. There are two big differences between him and the rest of those players. The first: playing time. The Uruguayan featured in 18.8 full-90s worth of Premier League action last season, while the other six guys all featured in at least 22.6 full-90s and for most on the list, much more than that. If Núñez plays more this season, then that should lead to a much more impressive overall goal output.
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And then there's the finishing. Among the other six, five of them were either within 0.5 of their number of expected goals or significantly ahead of it. Benzema, meanwhile, finished 2.9 goals behind his expected number, which is instructive for what to expect from Núñez.
Across Benzema's final six seasons at Real Madrid, he scored 91 non-penalty goals from 90.5 xG. He was an average finisher overall, but look at how the conversion rates changed from season to season:
2017-18: 8.2 fewer goals than expected
2018-19: 2.7 more than expected
2019-20: 0.3 fewer than expected
2020-21: 4.3 more than expected
2021-22: 4.9 more than expected
2022-23: 2.9 fewer than expected
Even among the best forwards in the world, finishing performance will wildly fluctuate from season to season. Since no single shot ever has a 100% or 0% chance of going in, you're either over- or under-performing your xG with every shot you take. Nunez finished 3.1 goals below expectation this past season, but we shouldn't expect that to keep happening... unless it keeps happening.
If he starts to play more often and starts to see the chances he's involved in converted at just a league-average rate, then watch out. Last season, he averaged 0.93 non-penalty expected goals+assists per 90 minutes. Only Lewandowksi and Mbappe were better. Even with the awful finishing, he still finished the season 15th in the Premier League league for non-penalty goals+assists per 90 -- right below Bukayo Saka and right ahead of Odegaard.
The "Multi-Million-Dollar Midfielder" Breakout
Everybody wants a holding midfielder, huh? I'm not really sure what's driving the market, but the deep-lying central midfielder has seemingly become one of the game's premium positions over the past 400 days or so.
Chelsea seem like they're about to spend over $200 million on two of them (Enzo Fernández and Caicedo). Liverpool might be spending $50 million on their own 19-year-old version (Romeo Lavia). Arsenal broke their transfer record to grab Declan Rice from West Ham United while Manuel Ugarte, another player on Chelsea's radar for a while, moved for a ton of money to PSG this summer. Aurélien Tchouaméni moved for a ton of money to Madrid last summer.
I used to be sympathetic to the idea that this is the hardest position to play on the field, but that was when players like Manchester City's Fernandinho had to single-handedly be exquisite transition stoppers and high-volume ball progressors all at the same time. The most recent tactical trend -- a fullback pinching in as a third center-back in possession, and perhaps the other fullback pinching in as a second holding midfielder -- would seem to lessen the importance of the individual holding midfielder, but the transfer market suggests otherwise.
If the trend continues, the next name to move for a baffling amount of money might be Crystal Palace's Cheick Doucouré.
Outside of a high volume of ball-winning, Doucoure's numbers don't really stand out in any way -- outside of one thing. You guessed it: he's played a ton of minutes at a young age.
According to research from the consultancy 21st Group, they've found that the someone who goes on to be what they define as a "successful player" in one of Europe's Big Five leagues will tend to hit these various benchmarks of senior-level minutes at these ages:
Age 17: 675
Age 18: 1,054
Age 19: 2,066
Age 20: 3,368
Age 21: 4,717
Age 22: 7,048
Age 23: 9,122
Doucoure is 23 and has already played over 12,000 domestic senior minutes at a position that isn't often entrusted to younger players. He's perhaps still a year away from his prime, so his best soccer is likely still ahead of him. And based on how much soccer he's already played, that prime holds the promise of being quite impressive.
It wouldn't shock me if he starts to influence matches in a greater and much more obvious way this season and then, come the end of the campaign, he becomes the latest midfielder that everyone is trying to sign.
The "Here's More Responsibility" Breakout
What if we took the Doucoure formula and applied it to a forward who just became his team's number-one attacking option? Well, then we'd have Brentford's Bryan Mbeumo.
Given all the success of his teammate, Ivan Toney, Mbeumo's performance feels like it's gone somewhat under the radar. He's only just entering his age-23 season with Brentford, and he's already played 14,510 senior domestic minutes. Last season, he averaged 0.5 non-penalty goals+assists per 90 minutes on a very high minutes load and backed it up with nearly identical underlying numbers.
The goal-or-assist-every-other-game mark is a decent rule-of-thumb for "above-average Premier League attacker." Only 27 players reached it last season, and Mbeumo got there with a year or two still to go before his prime and while playing for a team that had one of the bottom-five possession rates in the league.
As you can see from this radar, Mbeumo has the kind of game that almost feels designed to go under the radar. He does a little bit of everything, and he's deficient in the one area that everyone remembers: scoring goals.
When a player contributes in all those different ways, their statistical output is particularly likely to be tied to his team's tactics. Mbeumo did what manager Thomas Frank needed him to do, and goal-scoring wasn't at the top of his list of requirements.
However, that's all about to change. Toney is suspended for half the season, and Toney accounted for a bigger portion of his team's goal-scoring last season than everyone in the league other than Erling Haaland and Harry Kane.
I don't think Mbeumo will be able to replace all of Toney's goals on his own. But his career has been on a steadily upward trajectory, he might still get better, and he has the kind of well-rounded game that makes me think he could start scoring more goals at the expense of some of the other areas he's contributed in while Toney put the ball in the net.
Come the end of the season, Mbeumo might be a household name.
The "Post-Hype Sleeper" Breakout
Let's just take a quick second to remember how good Jadon Sancho was at Borussia Dortmund, OK?
Since 2010 in Europe's Big Five leagues, there are only two players who scored and assisted at least 70 non-penalty goals before their 22nd birthday. The first one is obvious: Kylian Mbappe, who comes in with 119 goal contributions. The second one, well, is probably also obvious because of the way I set up the previous paragraph.
It's Jadon Sancho!
The England winger assisted 48 goals and scored 40 more. Haaland, then, sits in a distant third, with 69 non-penalty goals+assists. While it seems obvious, in hindsight, that Haaland and Mbappe would be modern soccer's next pair of dominant superstars -- the guys who will battle for the Ballon d'Or, year after year -- Sancho was legitimately right there with both of them...
... and then he went to Manchester United. At United, Sancho has combined for nine goals and six assists in two Premier League seasons. And over those two years, he's featured in just over half (52.4%) of the Premier League minutes. The €85 million United paid for him two summers ago seemed quite reasonable at the time -- especially given how the likes of João Félix, Antoine Griezmann, and Eden Hazard all cost significantly more in the seasons prior -- but now it doesn't seem like anyone would come near that number were they trying to acquire him today.
It sure seemed like Sancho might be on a path to superstardom, that he was the kind of player who would raise the quality of the team around him, no matter how dysfunctional the squad might be. We'd expect that from Mbappe and Haaland, but we didn't get it from Sancho.
Of course, enough stars have failed at United that we can blame the environment rather than the players, more often than not. Plus, Sancho arrived right as Cristiano Ronaldo completely up-ended United's approach on and off the field, the wheels fell off for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, and Ralf Rangnick took over for one of the weirdest who-cares managerial half-seasons in recent memory. Then, last season, Erik ten Hag took over a badly constructed squad and had to figure out how to make it function on the fly.
This wasn't the kind of situation that was going to make it easy for a young player to succeed.
And guess what: Sancho is still only 23, and he's still got more than 11,000 senior domestic minutes under his belt. In some American sports, there's the concept of the post-hype sleeper: the uber-prospect who doesn't meet his potential, but then gets written off too early, when there's still time for him to capitalize on all of the promise he's already shown.
If there's one player across all of Europe who fits that model, it's Sancho. His performances were better last season than the one before; he was a really solid ball progressor and chance-creator; his three closest comps according to FBref's "similar players" algorithm are Jack Grealish, Riyad Mahrez and Bukayo Saka. Plus, for the first time in over a decade, Manchester United seem like they have a plan. The players, at the very least, don't seem like they're being left on their own to succeed or fail anymore.
Progress is rarely linear -- for anyone, anywhere. That's true, even when everyone expects you to become one of the best soccer players in the world.