Scouting Mathys Tel
And how to get things done (quickly)
Okay, here we go. Focus. Speed. I am speed. One winner, forty-two losers. I eat losers for breakfast. Breakfast? Maybe I should have had breakfast? Brekkie could be good for me. No, no, no, focus. Speed. Faster than fast, quicker than quick. I am Lightning.
Yes, I did just start a highly analytical piece with a Lightning McQueen quote. But he’s fast, Tel’s fast, and I’m saving the really terrible jokes for later.
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The Ball is Lava and I Need to Move
I’ve said this about Mohammed Kudus, but it’s true of Tel too: what makes Tel special is his ability to get things done. Fast.
He doesn’t need a million touches to get the ball cleanly off his foot and shoot. He doesn’t need hours to compose himself before taking his man on. He just wants to get closer to the opponent’s goal — and that intent is palpable.
Take this goal for example:
It seems like just another goal, but take a look at the direction Tel is leaning when the ball is played through:
He’s attacking the box at speed, but the pass is played behind him.
Quickly adjusts, driving up from his [strongly] planted right foot
One times the shot while falling laterally
To pull off this kind of goal with your first touch shows a) a high athletic floor, b) well-developed Type II muscle fibres, and c) guts, because this was Tel’s first Bundesliga goal, at the ripe old age of 18.
Near Post, Far Post, and Accessing Angles (Variety of Finishes)
To put it simply, Mathys Tel is a natural goalscorer. He’ll get shots off no matter where he is on the pitch, and his ball-striking is excellent.
Cushions the ball to receive and gets it off his foot in one go (the ball is lava!!!)
Very strong planting foot, high backlift
Clean connection with laces, leaning toward the direction of the intended curl
Bounces as he takes the shot; takes a jarring sort of tension off his knee
Tel comfortably has the full range of finishes in his locker. His near-post shots also have this sort of “snap” to them, so the ball accelerates really quickly as it comes off his foot.
Assume this red spot is a finishing zone. It’s the hardest area for a goalkeeper to reach — out of range for their leg, and too low for them to get down and save with their hand.
Realistically, from this angle, Tel doesn’t have much of the finishing zone to aim for. He’s too close to goal and has too many bodies in front of him to get enough curl on the ball while still maximizing power.
Yet he still snaps the ball just out of the goalkeeper’s reach, and beyond the off-balance marker in front of him. Textbook CF work.
This now brings me to “Mathys Tel You What I’ll Score a Goal”. In training:
Scaled up to an actual match:
And again, and again, and again:
A CF who can make shuttle runs out wide, cut in, generate loft, and float the ball over 5–6–7 heads quickly and consistently? Sign me up.
Tel’s shift-to-shoot (the touches between his initial touch and the final shot) abilities are quick, and I genuinely don’t think I can overemphasise how well he sets himself to shoot. It’s consistent, never goes beyond himself, and speaks volumes about how well he understands space.
Both these goals are, at their core, the same but differ in intent:
Tel sees roughly 1.5 players between the ball and the net on the left and gently lifts it through the air, tucking it well beyond and below the keeper’s outstretched [left] hand.
There’s an entire army (you know nothing, Jon Snow) between the ball and the goal, so: high backlift, gets under and through the centre of the ball, and gently lifts it over everyone’s head.
It’s smart to adapt to such small changes [in the moment], and it’s easier to do consistently since it’s the same kind of shot.
Plus, Mathys Tel’s quite good at finishing across himself:
I don’t think this is a particularly easy finish given you’re moving perpendicular to the ball and you’re falling off balance as you strike it (falling away from goal), so to make it look as easy as Tel did (whilst still shooting below the keeper’s hand) deserves a lot of credit.
Is this where I mention that Tel may as well be ambidextrous, given how comfortable he is passing and shooting with either foot?
Back to Goal Play
Realistically, Tel needs to improve his back-to-goal play if he wants to scale up to the next level and become a UCL level [starting] CF. Three caveats here though:
Most of Tel’s playing time has come off the left, meaning he’s picked the ball up deep and driven with it, so he hasn’t really had time to [practically] develop these skills.
Tel played as a CB until he was 15, so his physicality is already quite good.
Developing back-to-goal skills isn’t the hardest thing in the world.
When he’s pressed from behind, I think Tel *sometimes* struggles to shield the ball. But again, he’s usually doing this near the touchline, where you’ve got far fewer options and less room to work with.
Carrying, Dribbling, and 1v1s
I’ll preface this by saying Tel is best profiled as a CF who can make runs out wide and drive the ball upfield. He thrives with space ahead of him (to run on to) and benefits from seeing the entire pitch. But when he’s being used as a touchline winger, he loses a lot of room (you’re confined by the touchline).
Tel’s entire link-up play is built on the fact that he’s comfortable on his toes and light on his feet. The lighter you are, the more steps you can take in a short distance (cadence), the quicker you can adjust, and the faster you can change direction. For a wide striker like him, you need those traits to cause some chaos.
Tel’s toes touched the ground four times between receiving the ball and shooting. He did it in about 80 milliseconds. Jeez.
Take this goal too:
Tel looks slow here, but his feet move fast. He eats up ground, bends his run, feints at speed, slips away from his marker, and gets himself close to goal.
These bursts of pace are also really useful from standing starts. It’s not the most crucial trait for a CF — you’d usually either 1) hang off shoulders and threaten runs in behind, or 2) drop deep and then sprint back — but it definitely helps. Especially when you’ve got a goalscoring winger who likes to drift inside and combine.
The goalscoring winger (Odobert) cuts in, Tel goes wide and acts as a winger in his place. Thomas Frank, you lucky duck.
But as a CF, you’ve got to be better at handling the odd hit here and there. You score goals for your team, and your opponent would rather you didn’t. So, you take those hits:
Tel’s use of his body is probably his biggest strength when it comes to manipulating space — and I’d say that extends to physical usage too. He uses a stiff arm well to create separation from his marker, stays light on his feet to ride challenges, and his low centre of gravity makes him tough to knock off balance. His head is always up. ALWAYS. That shows how much faith he has in his ball control, how quickly he processes space, and how direct he likes to be.
Ultimately, all of this — his pace, strength, close control at speed, and ability to make both straight + bending runs — makes his dribbling and carrying special. He’s just a really powerful dribbler.
Overall, I’d say his dribbling is quite refined close to goal, but a little rash the farther out you get. He’s not someone who can carry the ball the length of the pitch — but a) he doesn’t have to be, and b) he can grow into that player.
With that, I’ll digress for a second. Tel learnt German and became fluent in it soon after joining Bayern. That’s incredibly mature for an 18-year-old, and if he applies that same dedication to other parts of his game, he can absolutely reach the high ceiling he’s set for himself.
Anyway, here’s Tel delaying a run for as long as possible, losing two defenders, and hammering the ball into the net just because he can:
Crossing and Data
This is admittedly more of a winger thing than a striker thing, but Tel’s crosses are weirdly accurate. Like, they’re actually really, really good:
=Having a striker who can score goals but also facilitate them can’t hurt.
Tel’s final ball isn’t quite there yet since he rarely attempts risky through balls, but he does generate plenty of flick-ons, and his crosses are good and make up a decent chunk of his xA. With context applied, I think he’s doing well enough for himself, but it’s also *fair* to expect more.
Speaking of data, I like using numbers in these reports because they offer a sort of objective (though often contextless) look at things. Tel’s data is a bit skewed, though, given his limited league minutes at Bayern and the way he was (poorly) profiled at Spurs.
Here are some numbers anyway (sample size warning):
This song’s been stuck in my head the entire time I’ve been writing this article. I won’t apologise if it’s stuck in yours now too.
TEL Talk
To put it bluntly, I think Mathys Tel is one of the best strikers to come out of France. I also think he could become one of the better wingers to come out of France. He presses well, is good with either foot, has always been highly rated, and ohmygod are those Ousmane Dembélé bells I’m hearing?
Bull case? I think Tel is going to become one of the best strikers in the world. I don’t have a bear case because I’m pretty confident in the bull case.
He presses well, understands space, creates for his teammates and himself, scores goals off stuff his teammates have created, is genuinely already a leader, and just seems like a really driven guy. Considering his areas of development — final ball, back to goal play — are things you can quite easily work on (finishing instincts, for example, are difficult to), that drive [almost] guarantees success.
I think Thomas Frank is the perfect manager for Tel, and whether Tel’s played as an inside forward with Udogie overlapping or eventually as Spurs’ first-choice CF (Solanke is a brilliant pressing forward, mind you), he’s going to score goals.
So yeah. World-beater soon. Thanks for coming to my Tel Talk.
Thank you for reading this piece. I truly appreciate all your support. I’ve got plenty of content planned for the next month (six pieces), so subscribe if you want to hear some terrible jokes. Oh and football analysis. That too. Share this with a friend if you cringed at my jokes (if you can even call them jokes).
Also (and if my constant link embedding didn’t give it away already) I wrote a piece going over Spurs’ squad and what I expect from it this season. It’s a long read, it’s detailed, and I like to think it’s pretty fun:
Once again, thank you for reading. Take care, and have a great week ahead.