Full of Hoppe: The latest USA youngster to breakout in the Bundesliga

Matthew Hoppe has certainly been a bright light in recent weeks, in what has otherwise been a disastrous season for Schalke. Hoppe’s rise has been rapid, moving from the U19’s to the U23’s, and now the first-team since the beginning of the season. He joins the likes of Josh Sargent at Werder Bremen, Gio Reyna at Borussia Dortmund, and Chris Richards at Bayern Munich in terms of young Americans plying their trade in Germanys top league.

Hoppe scored a hat-trick in the 4-0 win over Hoffenheim, and since then scored in the next two games, in a 3-1- loss to Eintracht Frankfurt, and a 2-1 loss to Koln. We need to tread carefully when assessing Hoppe’s talent. He has done wonderfully well in the seven games he has played so far for Schalke, but it is a small sample size, and until we can see these kinds of performances over a longer period of time, we must take everything with a pinch of salt. Nevertheless, his movement in the final third, calmness in front of goal, suitability to Schalkes tactics, and all round reading of the game has been very impressive for such an inexperienced striker. This tactical analysis and scout report will look at the American’s performances so far, and highlight some of the qualities that have seen him hit the ground running in his Bundesliga career.

Statistics

Before giving an analysis of his in-game performances, it is useful for us to look at his statistics from the Bundesliga this season to give us an idea of where he measures with other forwards, and the type of player he is.

To provide context to his stats, we have compared him with other U21 forwards in Europe’s top five leagues, who have played at least 400 minutes so far this season.

Firstly if we look at xG and xA per 90, we can see that Hoppe is a finisher, not a creator. He is under the average for these players for expected assists per 90, but his expected goals are above the average, comfortably enough.

In reality, Hoppe hasn’t registered an assist yet, which isn’t a surprise, but we can see that he has well over-performed his xG per 90, with only Ibrahima Niane and Erling Haaland registering a higher goals per 90 value. Both Niane and Haaland have outperformed their xG themselves, and whilst Haaland has proven himself to be an elite finisher, it remains to be seen whether Niane and Hoppe can continue to do so over a longer period of time, or whether they revert closer to their xG.

We can see what kind of forward Hoppe is by having a look at a few offensive statistics: dribbles per 90, offensive duels per 90, and touches in box per 90. The latter is shown by the size of the plot points.