So your club didn’t land Dean Huijsen this summer. Who should they target instead?

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One season is all it took for Dean Huijsen to assure the world of his talent.

After just 30 appearances in the Premier League — his first full season as a senior player — the 20-year-old has been whisked away to Real Madrid for almost four times the amount that Bournemouth paid Juventus for his services back in summer 2024.

There had been murmurs of his potential before his spell on the South Coast; Jose Mourinho called him “one of the highest quality prospects in European football at his age” in the lead-up to his debut for Roma.

But the ease at which Huijsen settled into top-flight football — comfortable in possession, dominant in duels, and seemingly unfazed by the pressure and the pace of the Premier League — was enough for Europe’s most successful club to make their move.

With Huijsen off the market, a unicorn defensive profile has bolted. Standing at 6ft 5in (195cm), yet happy to stride into midfield with the ball at his feet, pick out incisive passes with either foot, and defend proactively in an aggressive, man-to-man system, the Spaniard brings several desirable attributes at centre-back rolled into one.

Finding the next Huijsen is not simple — few can do quite as much as he can at such a young age. But armed with data from Opta and SkillCorner, and aware of the task at hand, The Athletic pick out some potential alternatives.

A good place to start is with the positivity and quality of Huijsen’s distribution from defence. As outlined in previous analysis by The Athletic, the 20-year-old rarely turns down a chance to move the ball forward, ranking highly among Premier League defenders for the proportion of his passes and carries that are classified as progressive.

Broadening our horizons to Europe’s top four leagues, we can outline some of the young centre-backs who contribute most to their team’s ball progression from the back. The graph below shows Brighton’s Jan Paul van Hecke clear of the pack, with a handful of promising Premier League names, from Marc Guehi to Nathan Collins, bearing a similar responsibility to Huijsen when it comes to forward passing for their teams.

Aside from van Hecke, Borussia Dortmund’s Nico Schlotterbeck stands out as one of Europe’s most adventurous centre-backs. But there’s one glaring catch: the German is out until October after tearing his meniscus in training last month.

Still, with just two years left on his contract, he could be available at a reduced price, and plenty of clubs will consider him worth the gamble, injury or not.

(Mika Volkmann/Getty Images)

Despite his curtailed season of just 21 games, only Inter’s Alessandro Bastoni (23) has created more chances than Schlotterbeck (17) among centre-backs in Europe’s top four leagues. That reflects his bold, creative passing style — “I like playing balls behind the back line and I like playing high-risk passes.”

Probably the clearest example of Schlotterbeck’s line-breaking ability came in the Champions League last-16 second leg against Lisbon side Sporting CP. He played a curved, raking ball through to Karim Adeyemi, threading it through a tight gap and behind all three defensive lines.

This isn’t some cherry-picked example; Schlotterbeck’s distribution is consistently dangerous. His passes generate an expected threat — the probability a pass leads to a goal within 10 seconds — of 0.2 per game, the fourth-highest among centre-backs in Europe’s top four leagues this season.

What’s more, he’s one of only two under-25 centre-backs — along with Udinese’s Oumar Solet — to have completed more long balls per game than Huijsen. He certainly brings the expansive, yet threatening, passing range that has seen Huijsen fly through the ranks.

But taking risks as a centre-back comes with harsher consequences when things go wrong, something Schlotterbeck acknowledges: “I’ve tried to cut back on these risks in recent years. But of course, I made two or three too many mistakes.”

His rising pass accuracy over the past few seasons shows he’s learning to temper that approach. Still, his creativity remains a rare asset, and most consider the mistakes a worthy trade-off.

One quirky area where Schlotterbeck truly stands apart from the crowd is corner kicks. Most centre-backs are known for rising above the crowd to head home, but Schlotterbeck flipped the script in his final match before injury against Mainz, delivering the corners himself and setting up two goals in the process.

Anyone pulling off a Schlotterbeck swoop — be it this summer or in a later window — is picking up a centre-back like no other.

Dani Vivian is another of the more established names to jump out from the scatterplot above, although a move for the 25-year-old would be tricky given his integral role at the heart of Athletic Club’s defence.

Like most players at the Basque side, Vivian came through the ranks, fast approaching 250 appearances for the club across seven seasons. He wears his heart on his sleeve, an old-school defender who relishes a tussle for possession as much as he does the opportunity to fizz passes through the lines and start attacks from a deep, playmaking role.

Against Getafe last week, he made 14 clearances, won all five of his ground duels, completed the most passes on the pitch, and poked home from a corner, his fourth goal of the La Liga campaign.

(Visionhaus/Getty Images)

“You look at him on the pitch and he is as straight as a stick, very serious,” said his centre-back partner Aitor Paredes early last year. “It’s not just a persona, it’s how he is; committed, proper, an old head on young shoulders”.

But don’t let that robust exterior fool you; Vivian is about as forward-thinking as it gets with the ball at his feet, in the top 10 for both progressive passes and carries in the Spanish top flight this season. His aggression and dominance in physical duels allow Athletic to sit high and squeeze the opposition in, while his line-breaking passes and raking passes into flying wingers help them to attack quickly.

Here are two examples amid hundreds from this season. Here, against Las Palmas, Vivian wraps his foot around a pass into striker Maroan Sannadi…

And here, against Real Betis, he finds roaming midfielder Oihan Sancet with another driven pass, taking six players out of the game as he switches up the speed of the game.

Not as glamorous or as technically effortless as Huijsen, but for proven, progressive quality, Vivian would be a strong second choice.

Closer to home, Jarrad Branthwaite enjoyed a stellar breakout Premier League season in 2023-24, with a string of composed and dominant displays at the heart of Everton’s defence. Now a mainstay in the league, he has flown a little more under the radar this campaign, quietly continuing his impressive rise.

Standing at 6ft 5in, Branthwaite mirrors Dean Huijsen in stature and style. Like Huijsen, Branthwaite is two-footed, quick across the ground, and calm in possession. At 22, he is two years older and more physically developed than the incoming Real Madrid player.

Jarrad Branthwaite is the most two-footed CB in the Premier League this season

63% of his passes, crosses, shots, and clearances are with his left foot, and 37% with his right foot

| #EFC #EvertonFC | pic.twitter.com/bP048ooFXt

— PFF FC (@PFF_FC) March 19, 2025

Everton’s direct approach — no Premier League team has played a higher share of long balls this season (16.2 per cent) — limits Branthwaite’s opportunities to showcase the ball-playing and high-line defensive traits prized by top clubs.

Still, mastering the bread-and-butter aspects of defending is no bad thing, and last season he won the fourth most aerial duels (95) and made a league-high 66 tackles.

(Visionhaus/Getty Images)

This season, he’s muddying his shorts less. His tackles, interceptions, and aerial duels are all down, with James Tarkowski taking on more of the aggressive defensive duties. That’s given Branthwaite more freedom to focus on his role in build-up.

His progressive passes have climbed from 3.5 to 4.7 per game, but it’s the spike in progressive carries — more than doubling from 2.9 to 6.1 — that really catches the eye. Those long drives upfield are key to helping a deep-lying Everton side transition out of their low block and kickstart attacks.

Branthwaite’s large frame can occasionally make him look cumbersome in tight spaces. In Everton’s 4-0 defeat to Manchester United this season, he was caught in possession by Amad after hesitating on the ball, a mistake that led directly to a goal. He’s not the finished article, but manager David Moyes called him “a big talent with lots of development to come.”

Incidentally, United were the most aggressive suitors for Branthwaite last summer, seeing multiple bids rejected by Everton. Occasional errors remain, but they’re unlikely to scare off admirers of a defender who thrives on traditional, no-nonsense defending but pairs it with a taste for progressive, front-footed football.

Similarly battle-hardened is young Greek centre-back Konstantinos Koulierakis — only four centre-backs under the age of 21 have played more minutes across Europe’s top four leagues this season.

Results quickly swung under Ralph Hasenhuttl at Wolfsburg, the Austrian recently sacked after a run of eight Bundesliga games without a win, but Koulierakis has continued to perform in both a wide centre-half role in a back three and a central berth in a four. He is strong, tall, and more of an anticipatory centre-back than one who flies into every challenge, with a left foot that Hassenhuttl used to go direct to get his team quickly up the pitch.

(Marcel Engelbrecht – firo sportphoto/Getty Images)

Huijsen is the only under-21 player to have completed more long passes in Europe this season, regularly searching for that ball over the top to get the defence backpedalling.

Here against Eintracht Frankfurt, for example, Koulierakis is quick to spot the run of Jonas Wind, and picks out the Danish striker with a pinpoint pass, allowing him to help it on for Mohamed Amoura to run through and score.

It’s not always tidy with Koulierakis — his long-ball completion rate, like that of Huijsen, is under 50 per cent — but it’s his technique that catches the eye, able to launch driven, flat passes all over the pitch. Wolfsburg tend to use him as the outball from goal kicks, under pressure and penned in near his own corner flag, where he’ll often lean into his kicking power and go long.

With more time to pick out his passes, however, as seen against Mainz below, he’ll invariably strike through the ball cleanly, finding winger Kevin Paredes in the penalty area with a zipped pass over eight opposition players.

Assured, expansive, and experienced beyond his years, the Huijsen comparison makes itself.

The very nature of panning for centre-backs, with many defensive metrics skewed by team quality and tactics, can quickly become subjective. What we see by eye on the pitch, as well as personal preference for how we prefer our centre-backs to operate, should be given similar consideration in the search.

Enzo Boyomo, for example, stands out for his distribution after a stellar breakout season with Osasuna. He is a confident ball-carrier, incisive passer, and has made more tackles than any other centre-back in the Spanish top flight this season, but can’t match Huijsen’s dominance in the air.

Lazio’s Mario Gila is another intriguing option. A passing specialist, he is the only centre-back to have completed over 100 long balls while maintaining an accuracy of over 65 per cent, but lacks the height and physical prowess of other candidates across the board.

Outside of the top leagues, PSV’s Ryan Flamingo ticks a lot of boxes. He’s the player to have completed the most passes in the Eredivisie last season. Still only 22, happy to jump forward and defend man-to-man, while inventive and proactive in his passing, he is another to keep an eye on after an impressive season at the heart of a title-winning side.

We might be waiting a while to see a centre-back as complete as Huijsen waltz through the Premier League again, but those who specialise in one or two of his many skills can still catch the eye.

(Header photos: Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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