The Best U-21 Defensive Midfielders in Eredivisie

After a brief spell of underwhelming performances by both the national team as well as the domestic clubs in Europe, Dutch football is on the rise again. While the Netherlands has always produced top talents, it seems more and more Eredivisie teams are giving youngsters a chance to prove themselves than ever before.

In this series, we will be taking a look at the underlying data to determine who the best U-21 defensive midfielders, central midfielders and attacking midfielders in the Eredivisie are. In this article, we'll be focusing on the defensive midfielders who were 21 years old or younger when the 2019/20 Eredivisie season commence, using data from Wyscout to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

Before we look at their actual numbers, it's important to stress that we have filtered out midfielders who have played fewer than 900 minutes this season. There are seven U-21 defensive midfielders in the Eredivisie: Lisandro Martínez (Ajax), Teun Koopmeiners (AZ), Oriol Busquets (FC Twente on loan from FC Barcelona), Ryan Gravenberch (Ajax), Edson Álvarez (Ajax), Dante Rigo (Sparta Rotterdam on loan from PSV), Godfried Roemeratoe (FC Twente).