Gent’s centre-back talent pipeline: The youthful trio poised for future first team success – scout report

K.A.A. Gent is a club that has been investing in young players recently. The Belgian team secured the signatures of sought-after young players in the January transfer window, including 19-year-old winger Momodou Lamin Sonko from BK Häcken and 21-year-old central defender Hugo Gambor from USL Dunkerque. 

The club do not just venture into the transfer market to bring in young talents. Gent has a thriving youth academy that many famous faces have benefited from. Manchester City star Kevin De Bruyne spent six years at Gent during his youth career before moving on to Genk and then Chelsea. Jonathan David joined the Belgian side as an 18-year-old and made over 60 appearances for De Buffalo’s before signing for Ligue 1 side Lille in the summer of 2020. 

Moreover, continuing their focus on providing young players with first-team opportunities, 19-year-old left winger Matias Fernandez-Pardo has recently been promoted to the senior squad from the youth system.

Thanks to the youth scouting platform EYEBALL, we can thoroughly scout players at youth levels. In this tactical analysis, we will focus on three central defenders in the Gent youth system who have been putting in some impressive performances. We will analyse how they fit into the teams tactics and asses whether we think they could be part of the Belgian side in the future. 

Senior team tactics

The graphic shows that throughout the 2023/24 season, manager Hein Vanhaezebrouck has ensured the Gent senior team primarily utilises three at-the-back systems. Ismäel Kandouss, Tsuyoshi Watanabe and Jordan Torunarigha are typically the three central defenders the manager opts for. In this analysis, we will look at the Gent youth system to identify three potential replacements from within so that when the time is right, the Belgian side can turn to their youngsters, and we can see them step up into the first team.

Jorthy Mokio

The first youth player we are going to look at in this scout report is 15-year-old Jorthy Mokio. The left-footed youngster is a highly versatile player who can play in several different roles. Primarily a centre-back, usually on the left side of a back three, Mokio can also play as a central defender or left-back in a back four.