Georginio Rutter Scouting Profile

Salutations, with Leeds being linked to Georginio Rutter from TSG Hoffenheim, I figured I should start by doing some scouting. But before I get into the nitty gritty, lets start with some basics.

Georginio started his career at Rennes, but was snapped up by Hoffenheim in February 2021 for a very low €750k. In this season he was immediately part of the first team setup, albeit mainly from the bench. Making 9 appearances, 2 of which were starts. But considering Georginio was only 18 at the time, this is still impressive.

In the following 21/22 Bundesliga season he made even more progress, making 33 appearances in total with 11 of these being starts, he finished the season with 8 goals & 2 assists. Which was impressive considering his young age and that most of his appearances were from the bench.

His total playtime at Hoffenheim across his 2 and a half seasons so far stands at 2861 minutes which equates to nearly 32 full 90s’ played. In which he has contributed 11 goals & 4 assists. Which for his age is pretty special. Hoffenheim are pretty much a mid table side in the Bundesliga and he’s been given a lot of minutes and in the current season he has played in every match starting in 11/15 league games.

Below is his positions played in his time at Hoffenheim, as you can see the majority of his appearances has been as a Centre Forward.

Positions played for Hoffenheim. Per Transfermarkt.com

However while he has played as a Centre Forward, he has primarily been playing in a 3–5–2 system. Which means he is used to playing with a strike partner. Which I do believe is what he is best suited for.

Ball Carrying & Direct Dribbling

One thing I noticed pretty quickly upon watching Georginio is that he is fond of carrying the ball. He’s got a good amount of height to him, standing at 6ft tall and having a decent amount of strength. He uses this to his advantage when carrying the ball.

He isn’t blessed with explosive pace but he uses his long stride to his advantage, similarly to what we see from Bamford. Which gives him a good amount of overall speed.

Wrestles with CB showing good strength, runs down the line and manages to get some space to cross.

Drops deep to receive, easilly turns the defender and carries well. Showing good strength to hold off. But then shoots earlier than he should. He should have held up the ball and maybe laid off to the player outside area.

Good first touch to receive long ball, turns well and beats his man. But then his final ball lets him down.

Good first touch, showed good strength and then beats a man with a nutmeg. It’s a shame the resulting pass was blocked.

As you see in a few of the examples above, he should be a good target for long balls. He shows good strength, and is decent aerially winning 42% of his aerial duels. This number may seem low, however it is still better than Rodrigo(32.9%), Gelhardt(33.3%) & Bamford(34.8%) and considering he is still so young, if he develops his physicality more he could develop this part of his game even more.

Not only can I see that he has good ball carrying and dribbling ability. The stats also back this up. He attempts the most dribbles in the Hoffenheim side by a large margin with 6.2 attempted p90 and he completes 2.9p90. I dont have his stats for ball carrying, but I’m confident this would show up very well compared to the rest of the division.

However I do feel that sometimes he could make a different decision, in the below example he does very well with his movement, going from wide to inside to receive the ball over the top. But then it was obvious he had 2 men in front of him, he should have moved the ball back and tried to find a passing option.

Good movement, wide to inside. Good movement into the box but then makes wrong decision.

His first touch does seem to be something of a strength, especially when receiving long balls, this is something which could be useful to us. Below is another example of this.

Good first touch, hold up play and pass choice.

He is capable of staying on the last line and trying to break to receive long passes, and this is something we should be encouraging in his game as we need a striker who will do this often. Below are some examples.

First gives option for long ball central and then moves wider to pull other CB wide.

Now lets take a look at his finishing, firstly I want to touch on his performance when compared to xG. In his time overall at Hoffenheim he has scored 11 goals from 11.6xG. Although this is a slight under performance, It’s one that I’m not concerned about.

His shot map shows he has a fondness for long range efforts, and he has scored a couple of these, he’ll fit in well with the rest of the Leeds squad in that sense.

He definitely is capable of striking the ball very cleanly and with power, But he does still have some improvement to do in my eyes, but considering his age. This is acceptable. Below are some examples of his shooting.

Very good movement to create space preceding a fine fine finish.

Good flick to keep ball alive, good movement and a well struck shot. Good 1v1 goalkeeping to stop it.

Fantastic movement to get infront of the defender but he didn’t connect with the ball well for the header.

Good height on his leap and well placed headed goal.

My favourite, a lovely finish with his “weaker” foot

The final thing to look at is how he creates chances for others, in his time at Hoffenheim he has 6 assists so far. When it comes to creating chances for others he has directly assisted 0.2 xGp90 for others as well as 2.8 Shot creating actions(SCA) p90. The majority of his SCA has come from passes(1.96) and secondly from dribbles(0.7)

I think at times he could be a little less selfish in his shot selection, as in a fair few occasions I’ve seen he could have generate a higher quality chance if he passed rather than shoot, but again this could be age related and can easily get better.

Good movement to stay onside, good strength to hold off the defender and finally a well delivered low cross to assist the goal.

Good movement to stay onside, good first touch and while it wasn’t a bad decision to shoot. The better option was to pass laterally for an open goal. Especially since the ball was on his weaker foot.

The shot did have good strength and was placed well. But the better option here was to play the ball into the box for his teammate.

Overall I would say that Georginio looks to be a very good player with potential to be elite. But there is a lot he needs to work on. His hold up play is serviceable but if he can improve his strength he could be very good in this area.

Additionally I think his decision making leaves some to be desired, but again considering his age, this is also something which will improve as he matures.

I do think we could probably find an older player, who is a more complete fit for what we want for less money. But they won’t be as fun to watch as Rutter will be. If the rumoured fee turns out to be correct, we look to be paying around €30mil, which equates to around £26mil. This is quite a large fee, but we are paying more for the potential in him than his current ability.

In closing, while this isn’t a sensible transfer. It’s one I’m looking forward to seeing play out. I have reservations about how well this will develop under Jesse Marsch, but for the future a new coach really has a fine player to work with here.

Thanks for reading.

Martin Riley