Over time, England has produced a wealth of talent in the central midfield position, including Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, and — more recently — Jude Bellingham.
With Bellingham’s recent success, many teams are seeking a midfielder who can combine the roles of a central midfielder and an attacking midfielder.
This player can dominate the midfield and contribute to the team’s success in the final third.
Watching the Belgian Pro League and Westerlo, there is a young British player who fits that mould and is having a very decent season abroad: Alfie Devine.
Devine was part of the Liverpool academy, but the Reds decided to release him at the age of 11 when he joined Wigan Athletic.
His time at Wigan was a success, as he played with the U23s at age 15 and developed into a player who was part of the English youth national teams.
When Wigan went into administration in 2020, Tottenham Hotspur quickly acquired the talented midfielder, and his career did not halt thereafter.
Making his Spurs debut in 2021 at age 17 and winning the 2022 U19 Euros with the English team, Devine flourished in a more advanced position.
He became famous for an altercation that saw Danny Drinkwater sent off in a Premier League u23 game.
However, life is not a fairy tale; Devine’s career did not take off at age 17.
He made his breakthrough at age 19 last season, being loaned out into League One for the first half of the season and into the championship for the latter half.
KVC Westerlo decided to sign Devine this season after his impressive pre-season at Spurs.
Since then, he has been a regular for the Belgian club.
In this scouting report and player analysis, we will examine what makes Alfie Devine so effective, identify his strengths, and pinpoint areas where the 20-year-old needs to improve to take the next step at Spurs under Ange Postecoglou.
Alfie Devine Stats 2024/25
The data for Devine this season in Belgium does not seem too great at first glance.
We need to keep in mind here that Devine is neither an out-and-out central midfielder nor a pure attacking midfielder.
Therefore, it is challenging to find comparisons for him because players are typically compared to their positional peers, and with Devine playing multiple positions, this is particularly difficult.
We can see Devine compared to other attacking midfielders in comparable leagues to the Belgian Pro League.
Multiple things stand out here, so let’s take a look at them one by one.
For one, Alfie Devine has a lot of touches in the opposing team’s box, which shows that his movement into the box is excellent, considering he plays in a deeper position than his peers most of the time.
He does not just have many touches in the box; he also converts these touches into a good number of shots and finishes off attacks at a good rate.
However, his shots do not usually have a high expected goal value.
In terms of passing, these trends continue.
Devine makes many passes compared to his peers, but this is not surprising, as he plays a more central role than an attacking one.
A problem here is that his passing is not very progressive and does not create many chances, but the latter once again has to do with his position.
In terms of defending, Devine is very successful in defensive and aerial duels, which comes as a bit of a surprise.
But truth be told, he does not engage in many defensive duels, even for an attacking midfielder.
This is a significant problem and was one of the reasons Spurs moved him into a more advanced position.
He is 20 years old, so we shouldn’t expect him to be elite already, and the statistics support this.
Still, the data reveal his strengths, and with further development, he will surely leverage these strengths into effective tools.
Alfie Devine Passing & Ball Progression
When examining midfielders in today’s game, we must consider their ability to progress the ball from the build-up into the final third.
Most teams rely heavily on their midfield to find solutions to get the ball forward and even create chances at the end.
Alfie Devine is not that great at progressing the ball overall.
In terms of ball progression, however, the youngster excels in two areas exceptionally well.
The first thing is his ability to carry the ball forward.
In terms of his progressive runs and carries, Devine is doing an exceptional job so far this season.
He is very often able to find space to receive the ball without immediate pressure.
He is also good at turning and finding space in front of him with the ball at his feet.
His first touch might be his greatest overall strength, and it is evident in these situations.
Devine has done really well from the start.
His movement off the ball is excellent, and he consistently receives the ball in a half-open stance, which enables him to use his first touch to evade defenders.
Devine is doing really well in terms of orientation in these situations, constantly checking over his shoulders to get a 360-degree view of the pitch around him and then using his soft touch to get away from defenders with ease.
Another great aspect of Devine is his 1v1 attacking ability in the final third.
As seen in the picture above, he takes on a large number of defenders in and around the box during games.
While he is not a great dribbler in terms of actually getting past defenders and beating them to the baseline, he is exceptionally good at using subtle movements and quick feints to set up his follow-up actions around the box.
This enables him to be a playmaker in the final third as well.
Examining his passing ability reveals a slight decline.
While Devine has decent passing technique, his passes often lack timing and precision, preventing them from being completed, especially in very tight situations.
While the movement looks good while passing, Devine does not hit the ball in the right spots.
His long passes are a bit low, and his low and short passes sometimes wobble and are hard to control.
While his orientation before receiving the ball is great, his orientation with the ball at his feet is bad.
He looks down onto the ball for most of the action and, therefore, puts himself under much pressure.
Here, we can see a typical situation for Devine.
He scans the field well, moves from the halfspace into the centre of the field, between the lines, and finds himself in a lot of space.
Devine receives the ball in a half-open stance, allowing him to open play towards the right side of the field easily.
He realises that he drags out one of the centre-backs before he even receives the ball, which is good on the one hand, but he locks into the long ball here very early and makes his decision just based on his early orientation.
He then has his head down and plays a very hard pass, which he executes technically very well, and is able to get his right winger going behind the defensive line.
Overall, Devine’s movement off the ball and elite first touch enabled him to be great in tight spaces.
His carrying ability is nice for progressing the ball, but his passing lacks the final touch to make him the best midfielder he can be on the ball.
Developing Attacking Threat
While he started out as a holding midfielder, his managers put Devine into a more advanced position early on in his Spurs career.
The team wanted to use his strengths in the final third more, especially emphasising his goalscoring ability.
While he struggled to score goals last season, which wasn’t surprising considering it was his first season at the professional level, he has already scored four goals for Westerlo so far this season.
This ability was not a secret; Devine had also scored a good number of goals in the major youth tournaments for the English national teams.
José Mourinho once said that he has “an instinct to appear in finishing zones and score goals.”
If one of the greatest managers of our time says something like that about a player, who am I to disagree?
Looking at Devine’s shot map so far this season, we can see that Mourinho was right about his young midfielder.
Alfie Devine gets into the box frequently and is able to create good shooting opportunities for himself as well.
Scoring four goals out of under four expected goals is decent as well, but looking at the shots he took in the box, he probably should have scored even more.
In terms of placement, Devine has a slight preference for the right side, which is understandable given his tendency to play a more left-leaning style and being right-footed.
Most of his shots are placed well near the post, and only four of them cluster in the middle of the goal.
The rest of his shots had good placement.
While his shooting technique enables him to do exactly that, his shooting power is inconsistent.
Therefore, his many shots from outside the box are not very dangerous most of the time and actually just cost his team possession.
He needs to remain calm in these areas and only pull the trigger when necessary.
He has the ability to score from there, but his decision-making is not yet there.
Here, we can see a particularly notable example of Divine being extremely dangerous for opposing defences.
Devine plays a striker in this situation, moving forward even further than usual and playing at the same height as the defensive line.
With his striker dropping into midfield, he drags one centre-back out of position here, and Devine instantly realises that and moves in that space quickly.
He then receives the ball, but the pass is rather bad.
Devine has a beautiful turning first touch here and ends up in the situation pictured above.
He then finishes with his second touch and places the ball well next to the far post, not leaving the goalkeeper any chance, equalising for Westerlo.
Once again, the same strengths highlighted earlier are evident: good movement into space, elite first touch, and now, additionally, good shooting technique and vision in front of the goal.
He needs to be a bit more composed in tighter situations, but that skill comes with experience and age, and I believe that Alfie Devine is on a good trajectory here.
Struggles Against The Ball
Alfie Devine needs to improve in his short passing and his defensive work.
While his success rate in defensive and aerial duels is decent to good, and his work ethic and intensity are fine, he lacks tactical and physical maturity in most defensive situations.
When his team defends in a deep block, he often gambles for interceptions and defends way too aggressively.
His defensive actions are high-intensity but not controlled enough, and he takes many bad angles in the press.
Most of these things are not worrisome for a player his age, and especially the maturity that will come with more experience, but his orientation and decision-making are also worse than they are with the ball.
Here, we can see Westerlo in a deep block against Brugge, and Devine is trying to press the centre-back in the half-space here.
Unfortunately, he takes a very bad path.
While he is supposed to lead the build-up to the outside, he never even comes close to putting pressure on the ball or opening up the passing lane to the midfield.
Brugge then makes a mistake, and one of his teammates pokes the ball loose, but Devine still cannot recover it.
Compared to the Brugge players, he only looks at the ball from the start and never tries to gain leverage.
His reaction time is also not great, so the Brugge player has a bigger distance to cover when recovering the ball.
It’s not time to be concerned about his defensive skills yet, and many of them will improve with time, but Alfie Devine needs to work on his orientation and tactical ability against the ball.
Conclusion
There were high hopes for Alfie Devine at a very young age, and although he did not follow the same path as Jude Bellingham, his career is currently on the right track.
With his elite first touch and great movement, Devine fulfilled the prophecy José Mourinho made for him when he was just 17 years old.
The young English midfielder is prospering into a good attacking midfielder right before our eyes.
Although his season at KVC Westerlo is not perfect, he joined the team without a pre-season and instantly hit the ground running, becoming an important player.
This is impressive, considering his age.
In the future, he needs to focus on improving his ball security and defensive abilities.
These are key skills for a modern midfielder, and he is not good enough at either.
However, given his development over the last couple of years and his strengths, Alfie Devine has a decent chance of eventually breaking into the Tottenham first team.
