Oscar Wendt did not have Malick Yalcouye as a team-mate for long at IFK Gothenburg, but the Swedish club’s 38-year-old captain and left-back liked what he saw.
Brighton & Hove Albion’s renowned player recruitment operation also have a high opinion of Yalcouye. They identified the 18-year-old midfielder as a worthwhile investment and paid £7.6million ($9.7m) plus additional clauses to bring him to the Amex Stadium on a contract until 2029. That was despite him having made just 11 outings in Sweden’s top-flight Allsvenskan for Gothenburg and 15 appearances across all competitions.
It is a small sample size, but Fabian Hurzeler, Brighton’s new head coach, believes Yalcouye has “lots of potential to develop into a top-class player”.
Yalcouye is the product of the type of smart scouting by Gothenburg that Brighton specialise in themselves. Born in Mali, he grew up in the Ivory Coast and holds dual citizenship. He played in his adopted country for ASEC Mimosas, the club where former Manchester City icon Yaya Toure began his career.
Gothenburg signed Yalcouye in the 2023 winter transfer window on a five-year contract. They left him at Mimosas until bringing him over to Europe in January 2024.
Markus Wulcan, Gothenburg correspondent for Expressen, a national newspaper in Sweden, says: “That is unusual for Gothenburg. They don’t do that sort of thing very often.
“He doesn’t speak English or Swedish, just French. The (former) coach (Jens Berthel Askou) wanted to put him into the under-19s team so that he could adapt, but the sporting director (Ola Larsson) said, ‘No, we will put him directly into the first team’.”
Larsson’s vision of what Yalcouye was capable of was rapidly vindicated. Although Gothenburg won only three of the 11 league games in which he featured, Wulcan says: “He was outstanding. They play 4-3-3 and he was in the middle. He never gets tired. He is everywhere on the pitch and quite good technically. He plays as if he is a 25-year-old.”
Seven-figure transfer fees are modest in a Premier League context, but the quick and substantial profit on Yalcouye is a big deal for Gothenburg, as they are struggling financially.
“It was a bit of a surprise because Brighton are a Premier League team,” says Wulcan. “I thought it would be a Dutch team or a team from Belgium. But he is that good that he could show himself in the Premier League.
“It’s a huge transfer for IFK, the biggest ever by far. The previous record was around €5million (£4.3m $5.5m), so it is almost double. That was for Benjamin Nygren in 2019. He signed for Genk in Belgium (Nygren has been at Nordsjaelland in Denmark since January 2022). He (Yalcouye) has more or less saved the club’s finances. They really needed that money.”
Brighton’s model when they sign young players from abroad works in one of three ways to enhance their development. They keep them in-house to monitor, send them out on loan at the earliest available opportunity deemed suitable, or they loan them out further down the line.
For example, Cameroon midfielder Carlos Baleba was integrated into the first-team squad last season after signing from French club Lille, while Simon Adingra’s first year as a Brighton player was spent on loan at Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium.
Simon Adingra celebrates for Belgian side Union Saint-Gilloise, where he spent the 2022-23 season on loan (Isosport/MB Media/Getty Images)
Moises Caicedo was also loaned out to a Belgian side, Beerschot, but only for six months before the Ecuador midfielder went on to make his mark in the first team, attracting a British record transfer fee of £115million from Chelsea last summer.
Yalcouye was thrown in at the deep end within days of arriving in mid-July. He was part of Hurzeler’s squad for the tour of Japan against two J1 League opponents. An encouraging cameo appearance as a late substitute in a 5-1 win against Kashima Antlers was followed by a first-half outing alongside 38-year-old James Milner in a 4-2 victory against Tokyo Verdy.
Yalcouye, capable of playing as a No 6 or No 8, exhibited two of his key characteristics against Verdy. He is good on the ball and he likes to get forward. He did not feature in Saturday’s 1-0 win away to Championship side Queens Park Rangers. Hurzeler’s midfield options are in flux following the departure of Pascal Gross to Germany and Napoli’s interest in Billy Gilmour.
Mats Wieffer will be first choice. The signing from Feyenoord, brought on in the second half against QPR, has recovered from the thigh injury that ruled him out of the European Championship for the Netherlands.
Even if an £11million move for Paraguay international Diego Gomez is sealed, the 21-year-old from Inter Miami would not arrive until the January transfer window.
Yasin Ayari has been in the pre-season mix after spending last season on loan in the Championship with Coventry City and Blackburn Rovers. Then there is Baleba, who has also been used by Hurzeler as a central defender in Japan and at left-back on Saturday. Mahmoud Dahoud and Jakub Moder are not in Hurzeler’s plans.
Hurzeler has an open mind about what comes next for Yalcouye, saying: “He is very good for his age. We have to look week by week, how far he is with his development, if he is ready to play in the Premier League.
“He will be ready, but I don’t know when. We also have to be very careful with him, to prepare him for this moment.”
(Top photo: Courtesy of Brighton and Hove Albion)
