Erling Haaland, Kylian Mbappe and Victor Osimhen are worth huge amounts of money
and are playing for extremely large clubs. But there’s a hidden generation of near-elite
goalscorers about to step up and while you might not know them already, you will soon.
First on our list: Mateo Retegui.
He’s a 24 year-old Italian international who was born in Argentina, but who received his
first caps off the back of a highly impressive loan spell at Tigres. Over the summer, though,
he completed a permanent transfer to Serie A, leaving parent club Boca Juniors for Genoa.
Retegui is a pure goalscorer. Former Italy head-coach actually compared him to Gabriel
Batistuta. Not unreasonably, because he does play with a lot of power
and – unlikely many modern forwards – he is singularly focused on scoring goals.
The Athletic’s Jack Lang wrote a profile in July of 2023. Retegui, he said, “clobbers shots with
such violence that you wonder what the goal net did to offend him. He doesn’t head the ball;
he headbutts it. He is always, always shooting.” He’s often scoring too. How he performs in a major
European league remains to be seen, but he scored on his international debut for Italy,
against England, and shows no sign of being awed by the higher level.
Gift Orban has experienced a very quick rise. He moved from Nigerian amateur football to Stabaek,
in 2021, playing initially in the Norwegian First Division, which is the country’s second tier.
His 16 goals earned them a promotion and him a move – this time to Gent
in the Belgian Pro League. He joined mid-season, but ended the campaign with
a remarkable 15 goals from 16 games. Orban isn’t physically imposing. He’s
got a low centre of gravity and the technical ability to shift direction
sharply and evade defenders. He’s also an instinctive penalty box forward whose goals
depends on anticipation and smart positioning. He’s a record holder, too: his hat-trick against
Istanbul Basaksehir in the Europa Conference League – timed at 3m25s – is the quickest in
UEFA club competition history. Santos’ Marcos Leonardo was one
of the standout players in the u20 World Cup held in the summer of 2023. His Brazil were
eliminated in the quarter-finals, but he scored in four of the five games he took part in and
was the tournament’s second top-scorer. He bears more than a passing resemblance
to another Brazilian forward: Hulk. He too is stocky and very left-footed
and combines power with trickery to score goals and create attacking opportunities.
Still just 20, he’s in the middle of his second season as a regular starter for Santos. He scored
13 times in 34 games during his first and is currently scoring at more than a goal every
two games in his second, while typically playing as the lone forward in a 4-2-3-1.
Karim Konate comes from an illustrious background.
He was raised in the academy system at ASEC Mimosas in the Ivory Coast, which counts the
Toure brothers, Gervinho and Odilon Kossounou among its alumni. He joined RB Salzburg in 2022,
but spent much of his first season on loan at Liefering, part of the Red Bull network. 15
goals in 18 games proved he was much too good for the Austrian 2.Liga and Konate
quickly bounced back to the parent club. He's another dynamic, but widely talented
player. According to a 2022 Guardian profile, he grew up idolising Karim Benzema. And there
are traces of that influence in the breadth of his game. He’s two footed, is formidable in the
air and also a threat from both close range and distance. He has shown during his time in Austria
that’s also capable of playing in wide channels – so much so that he might have a future as a
wide-forward, instead of as a pure No.9. Konate made his international debut for
Ivory Coast when he was just 16. And, now playing for RB Salzburg in the Austrian Bundesliga,
he began the current season by scoring three times in his first three games.
Perhaps one of the unluckiest players this summer was Mathys Tel. While Sadio Mane’s departure and
Eric Choupo-Moting’s advancing years seemed to afford him a real opportunity at Bayern Munich,
Harry Kane’s arrival in 2023 quickly shut many of those same doors; Kane is going to start.
But Tel is a remarkable talent – perhaps even the most gifted player on this list. He
scored five Bundesliga goals last season, despite playing fewer than 400 minutes,
but the other areas of his game are what allow him to stand out. He’s a superb carrier of the ball,
a willing presser, and – at just 18 and 6ft – is already filling
out to be a truly complete centre-forward. He’s another who’s strong with both feet,
but he’s also incredibly stylish on the ball. The data charting his performance is skewed
by Bayern’s strength and his lack of game time last season but - given the right opportunities
in the future - there’s no reason why he too cannot one day be a £100m player.
Brighton’s Evan Ferguson has already made a name for himself in the Premier League. The
Republic of Ireland international is physical and skilful and scored 6 times from just 10
starts in 2022-23 – but he’s already the focus of interest from major clubs and
that’s not really the purpose of our list. Folarin Balogun falls into the same category.
So does Leverkusen’s Victor Boniface and RB Leipzig pair Lois Openda and Benjamin Sesko.
All three are excellent players, and will score goals for many years to come, but they have both
achieved a certain level of prominence already. Instead, the last place on our list goes
to Terem Moffi who, at 24, is proving to be a late bloomer.
Moffi joined Nice from Lorient midway through the 2022-23 season and – combined - scored 18 Ligue1
goals from 32 starts. He’s a left-footed Nigerian international and has a running
and playing style which isn’t so different from Erling Haaland. He’s not the smoothest dribbler,
but he’s an accomplished passer and – like so many on this list – an interesting hybrid
of skill and strength. Added to his goals, it makes him worth watching but also inevitably
someone who will become more prominent in European football in the coming years.