For those craving more international football after a summer that’s already brought us a European Championship and the Copa America, allow the Olympics to sate your appetite across the next few weeks.
The Games’ men’s football tournament is an opportunity to watch exciting young talent represent their country, with the competition largely comprised of under-23s players — plus three designated over-age members in each of the 16 squads.
The Athletic has already analysed which players USMNT fans ought to watch out for on their Olympics roster as the action kicks off with eight matches across France today (Wednesday), but who should we be keeping an eye on across the wider competition?
Hosts France’s exciting forwards, a stacked Spanish contingent looking to add to their men’s and women’s senior sides’ recent triumphs and standout performers from less-fancied nations Israel, New Zealand and Uzbekistan; here are 10 players to watch…
Desire Doue
Age: 19
Country: France
Club: Rennes
In typical circumstances, a player with the prodigious talent of Desire Doue would already have a handful of senior caps by now — having risen through France’s under-17, under-19 and under-21 sides. But a glut of midfield and forward options meant Doue did not receive the call-up to Euro 2024 in Germany earlier this summer. Instead, a home tournament awaits the 19-year-old, with coach Thierry Henry, a member of the squad who won the 1998 World Cup on French turf, selecting Doue as the only teenage outfield player in the 18-strong group.
Despite his age, Doue has earned plenty of first-team experience since breaking through at Rennes last season, playing nearly 3,000 minutes in Ligue 1 since 2022-23. His versatility has been a particularly key asset, as he’s capable of playing anywhere in midfield or on either flank, and could be useful with the small Olympic squads.
Wherever he plays, Doue’s fleet-footed style means his biggest strength is driving beyond opponents through the heart of the pitch. No midfielder averaged more than his 4.3 progressive carries per 90 minutes in France’s Ligue 1 last season, which highlights his desire to drag his team upfield and move the ball into dangerous areas when given the opportunity.
Doue has attracted attention from Europe’s elite clubs in the past 12 months, with Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich among the most interested suitors.
The opportunity to showcase those skills in the Olympics this summer will surely only further highlight his talent.
Thiago Almada
Age: 23
Country: Argentina
Club: Botafogo
Avid watchers of MLS will already be well aware of Thiago Almada’s supreme technical ability but the Olympics represents a rare opportunity for him to showcase those abilities front and centre of the international stage.
(Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Across three sparkling seasons with Atlanta United, the diminutive No 10 racked up an impressive 34 assists, providing chances for team-mates at a rate of 3.0 per game. He is also an elusive dribbler — only three MLS players carried the ball over a higher average distance per game during his years in that league — as well as a set-piece specialist, having scored six sensational free kicks, half of those over 25 metres (more than 27 yards) from goal.
Most importantly, Almada — newly signed by Brazilian top-flight club Botafogo in an MLS-record $30million (£23.2m) deal — thrives when he can drop deep and dictate the tempo of the game. Having taken more than 100 touches in a single match on 10 separate occasions for Atlanta, he is always looking to drift into deeper areas from his natural position in the left half-space, so he can receive the ball, wriggle away from pressure and look to move his team into more dangerous areas.
As the pass clusters in the graphic below illustrate, he floats all across the final third to try to advance play towards goal.
There may be four World Cup winners in Argentina’s talent-stacked 18-man squad, but Almada, along with Manchester City’s exciting new recruit Claudio Echeverri, 18, will be the creative duo looking to pull the strings.
Oscar Gloukh
Age: 20
Country: Israel
Club: Red Bull Salzburg
Red Bull Salzburg have a penchant for spotting young attacking talent.
Sadio Mane, Karim Adeyemi, Noah Okafor, Erling Haaland and Benjamin Sesko have climbed the Austrian mountains on their way to becoming household names, and Oscar Gloukh looks to be the latest player to make the ascent.
He only turned 20 in April, but Gloukh is not shy on the biggest stage — finding the net at the Estadio da Luz and San Siro last season during Salzburg’s Champions League group games against Benfica and Inter Milan respectively. Goalscoring is not the core part of his game though, as Grouch plays more as a No 10 who can drift wide and create for others. No player registered more than his 11 assists (0.5 per 90 minutes) in the Austrian Bundesliga last season, which shows why he has attracted interest from Europe’s top clubs this summer.
Gloukh’s close control, weight of pass and two-footedness display a technical proficiency beyond his year. His smarterscout profile — which gives players a series of ratings from zero to 99 based on either how often they perform a specific action or how effective they are at it — points to a player who enjoys getting on the ball and making things happen.
Gloukh was instrumental in helping Israel reach the Olympics after their impressive run to the semi-finals of the Under-21 European Championship last summer — losing 3-0 to eventual winners England. Paris 2024 is another chance for those young stars to shine.
Samuel Omorodion
Age: 20
Country: Spain
Club: Atletico Madrid
This could be a big summer for Samuel Omorodion.
(Manuel Queimadelos/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)
After a successful loan spell in La Liga with Alaves last season, the 20-year-old has the opportunity to lead the line in the Olympics and bring more football glory to his country after Spain sides won the Women’s World Cup and Euro 2024 in the past year — but his future at club level has been a source of speculation.
Chelsea had a €32.5million (£27.4m/$35.3m) offer rejected by Atletico Madrid last month, with the striker known as Samu’s services in high demand.
This is a player whose attributes perfectly encapsulate a modern-day centre-forward.
At 6ft 4in (193cm), his skill set is more reflective of a seasoned, peak-age striker than one who has just completed his debut season in Spain’s top division and only turned 20 in May — much in the same way that a young Romelu Lukaku roughed up defences for Anderlecht and West Bromwich Albion in his teenage years.
Samu is not an all-action No 9, with just 15.2 passes per 90 minutes ranking him among the bottom 10 per cent of forwards in La Liga last season. Nor is he the most clinical finisher across Europe, with a fairly modest eight league goals to his name for Alaves.
What looks most promising is his knack for arriving in lucrative areas to score — ensuring his shots are predominantly from within the width of the six-yard box. If he continues like that, more goals will come.
Atletico only signed Samu from fellow Spaniards Granada last summer, before loaning him to Alaves for the 2023-24 season. A strong showing at the Olympics, and his club might have a harder job in fending off interest from Europe’s top sides.
Alex Paulsen
Age: 22
Country: New Zealand
Club: Bournemouth
It took Alex Paulsen only 32 A-League starts to become the second-most-expensive export yet from the top flight of club football in Australia and his homeland. Joining Bournemouth for just over £2million this summer, he will become just the seventh New Zealander to play in the Premier League.
Twenty-two is young for a goalkeeper, especially for one who has racked up the individual accolades Paulsen has. Statistically, he led the A-League last season in save percentage (81 per cent) and goals prevented — a metric that uses xGOT (expected goals on target) to calculate how many goals the average ’keeper is expected to concede based on the quality of shots faced.
(Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
Boosted by three penalty saves and sprawling, fingertip reaches like the one below, that number suggested the average goalkeeper would have conceded almost 16 goals more than Paulsen actually did.
This save from Alex Paulsen 🔥🤯 Just wait for the reverse angle 🤤
Tune in on Paramount+ 📺#WELvADL #ALM @WgtnPhoenixFC pic.twitter.com/WVQNwEOyuZ
— Isuzu UTE A-League (@aleaguemen) March 3, 2024
He should be kept busy in a tough-looking group also containing the USA, Guinea and France — sides who will test his shot-stopping credentials. We should also get a good look at his distribution too, having already shown himself to be calm and collected with the ball at his feet.
Big performances this summer will only strengthen his footing in Bournemouth’s upcoming Premier League plans.
Eldor Shomurodov
Age: 29
Country: Uzbekistan
Club: Roma
Football in Uzbekistan is in a good place at the moment, with the national side suffering just one defeat in their past 13 competitive games, and firmly in the mix to qualify for their first ever World Cup.
Shomurodov is the towering talisman at the top of that team, already his country’s leading goalscorer at 29 years old. Following four years at Russia’s Rostov, culminating in an impressive 11-goal 2019-20 season, he made a series of trailblazing moves across Italy, most notably to Jose Mourinho’s Roma in 2021, where he became the most expensive Central Asian player in history.
Standing 6ft 2in (190cm), Shomurodov’s standout quality is in the air, quickly developing a reputation in the Russian Premier League for powerful headed goals. Leading the line for a team unlikely to dominate possession in games at this tournament, his presence and back-to-goal strength will provide a crucial out-ball to get Uzbekistan up the pitch. He also possesses a surprising turn of pace, a powerful forward runner who can attack the space on the counter.
(Marco Canoniero/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Alongside centre-back Abdukodir Khusanov, off the back of his first season at Ligue 1 club Lens, and creative midfielder Abbosbek Fayzullaev, who racked up 11 goal contributions for CSKA Moscow at just 19 years of age, Shomurodov is the elder statesman of an emerging football nation.
It’s Spain up first for them in Paris’ Parc des Princes this afternoon. No pressure, lads.
Alex Baena
Age: 23
Country: Spain
Club: Villarreal
Villarreal cashed in on three of their premium academy graduates last season, but held onto arguably their brightest one.
Alex Baena has had to bide his time for consistent minutes in the Spanish top flight, sent out on loan to the second tier in 2021-22 while his parent club enjoyed an inspired run to the Champions League’s semi-finals. Unai Emery, Villarreal’s manager at the time, kept a close eye on Baena, however, integrating him into the side after he flourished in a second-striker role during Girona’s promotion campaign. He scored twice in his first La Liga game back with Villarreal in August 2022, and has featured in all but 13 of their matches since.
From a deeper role last season, the 23-year-old quietly set the playmaking pace across Europe, recording more assists (14) than any other player in the big five leagues (La Liga, the Premier League, Germany’s Bundesliga, Serie A in Italy and France’s Ligue 1). More encouraging was the variety of those creative actions; no La Liga player made more assists from cutbacks, through balls or set pieces (all four), while he also led the division in successful crosses.
With the thundering forward runs of Samu up ahead in this competition, and Baena’s weight of pass from central areas, don’t expect those creative numbers to dwindle.
Eliesse Ben Seghir
Age: 19
Country: Morocco
Club: Monaco
Eliesse Ben Seghir arrives at the 2024 Olympics as the youngest player in the Morocco squad.
At 19 years old, he has already shown strong character to overcome the niggling injuries that curtailed his 2023-24 season, limiting him to four starts. His momentum was certainly lost after breaking into Monaco’s first team at just 17, which included a dream Ligue 1 debut where he scored two goals off the bench against Auxerre.
“It’s true I’ve found it slow in recent months, with my two injuries in the first part of the season,” the teenager said. “It was very hard to watch my colleagues play without being able to help them win the matches. But now I’m back, so I’m happy.”
(Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images)
Able to play anywhere across the front line, Ben Seghir is a versatile forward whose drop of the shoulder is enough to unnerve any opponent who comes near him. His appreciation of space means that he is often given the freedom to pick up pockets of space as he sees fit — drifting wide, deep, or advanced areas to inflict maximum damage.
Goalscoring is not necessarily the key part of his game, but a return of six league goals in limited minutes highlights a clinical edge at the top end of the pitch.
Ben Seghir has already been capped by Morocco’s senior side, but being part of their Olympic challenge this summer will be a good opportunity for the teenager to regain fitness and form ahead of a club season that sees Monaco playing in the Champions League for the first time since 2018-19.
Keep an eye on this one, his future is as bright as he wants it to be.
Michael Olise
Age: 22
Country: France
Club: Bayern Munich
Michael Olise’s confidence must be at a career-high at the moment. The 22-year-old has just signed for Germany’s top club Bayern Munich for £50million, and he now has the opportunity to win an Olympic medal on home soil.
Standing out in a mid-table side can be tricky, not least when you also miss so much of the season concerned with two different hamstring injuries, but Olise’s ability to effortlessly glide across the pitch meant it was difficult to ignore him at Crystal Palace last term.
Alongside Eberechi Eze, Olise was the key figure in Palace’s attack. He was single-handedly responsible for 21 per cent of their expected assists — a stat which measures the quality of the shot that is assisted — and also for nearly a third (29 per cent) of their total assists since the start of 2022-23, which highlights the creative responsibility that the now 22-year-old had at his former club.
Not bad for someone who only played 37 per cent of Palace’s available minutes last season.
At the very least, Henry’s France will be expected to be among the medals in this competition when considering how stacked their squad is with young talent — a group spearheaded by the wise head of 33-year-old captain Alexandre Lacazette.
As one of the most potent attacking players in the tournament, Olise is likely to be pivotal in ensuring that the medals hung around their necks next month are gold.
Julio Enciso
Age: 20
Country: Paraguay
Club: Brighton
Having missed most of the 2023-24 season with a knee meniscus tear, Enciso is making up for lost time. Despite Paraguay’s disappointing Copa America group-stage exit, Brighton’s talented young forward took 14 shots, created six chances and attempted 16 take-ons in their three games.
Being picked for the Olympics too gives Enciso another opportunity to get minutes in his legs, and to build on those promising showings in the United States.
He scored his first international goal at the back post in Paraguay’s opener against eventual finalists Colombia, forced a fingertip save from Liverpool’s Alisson when facing Brazil next time out, and probably should have registered at least an assist from a series of spins into space and driving runs in a 2-1 defeat against Costa Rica. At times, the 20-year-old was shouldering the attacking responsibility of a nation all on his own.
“Julio has the individual quality to change a game by himself,” said Paraguay head coach Daniel Garnero midway through the competition, “but he still has to understand where and when. He takes charge of the moment, but he doesn’t need to ‘save’ us all the time.”
Enciso will respectfully agree to disagree, and with even fewer established stars in the Olympics squad than there were in the Copa one, he will once again be desperate to provide the spark.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
