Data Analysis: Scouting the Ekstraklasa

The Polish domestic market is one of my favourites to scout in. There is an interesting mix of teams with some being more competitive than others but almost all are willing to trust in young players as a part of their first-team setup. This means that there are often players with interesting profiles to watch as well as a mix of foreign players who quite often come from interesting markets. When you take this alongside the fact that often valuations are on the relatively affordable side of the scale in relation to the quality of the league I think there is a real opportunity to get players of genuine talent out of Poland. In this article, I will be identifying five players in the Polish top-flight who have impressed me so far this season both in terms of their data output and in terms of their performances when watching matches on video.

When I am using data in the recruitment process my methodology remains relatively static. I use Wyscout as the data source, the best option from a cost/quality/depth perspective and Tableau as the tool for visualising and interpreting the data. Using these simple tools I am able to gain insights into the performances of players and indeed clubs from across the football world. I have my own combinations of metrics that are used to identify players that are well but these are also combined with metrics that meet the specific requirements and style that the client club prefers. Having assessed player performances I then move on to the longlisting process using custom-built dashboards within Tableau. These will be shown below and allow me to quickly assess player performance across a number of key metrics depending on the position of the player in question.

While I always use data as part of the data process that does not mean that I think that data is alone for a decision to be made on the recruitment of a player. Instead, I use data to identify players who are either performing well or who have metrics that fit specific KPIs of any of the clients that I work for. Once I have used the data to identify the players that might be of interest they then go into the workflow for video scouting and to have a profile and report made up on the player in question.

#1 Konrad Gruszkowsi, 20-years-old, right-back, Wislaw Crakow and Poland

The first player on my shortlist for this week is the 20-year-old right-back Konrad Gruszkowski. The young fullback is currently contracted to Wisla Krakow and is well on the way t0 having his breakout season. Gruszkowski is a product of the youth academy at Wisla although he did spend a short spell on loan at Motor Lublin in 2019. Last season saw the young fullback play 423 minutes at first-team level across all competitions. So far this season he has already played 1064 minutes across all competitions with 805 of those coming in the league.

Gruszkowsi is a combative right-back out of possession but he is also confident and capable in possession of the ball. He is listed at 183cm | 613 with a broad frame. In the defensive phase, he impresses with 7.68 defensive duels per 90 and a success rate of 66.13% as well as 2.97 aerial duels per 90 with a success rate of 54.17%. As well as being capable and comfortable when defending in direct duels he also impresses with his reading of the game and ability to break up opposition attacks this is shown in his 7.65 possession adjusted interceptions.

While he is st