In December 2019 I sat down and wrote a scouting profile on an 18-year-old AZ Alkmaar striker called Myron Boadu. I called him world-class. I predicted Manchester United. Six and a half years on, he's at PSV Eindhoven and the story went somewhere very different. So rather than quietly delete the piece, I'm doing what I think every scout should do: keep the original call on record, then own how it aged. Here's what we saw then, and where he is now.
Who we profiled in 2019
The basics as they stood when we first flagged him:
- Date of birth: 14 January 2001 (18 at the time)
- Place of birth: Amsterdam, Netherlands (Ghanaian roots)
- Height: 183cm
- Club then: AZ Alkmaar
- Position: Centre-forward, could also play left wing
- Preferred foot: right
- Contract then: to 30.06.2023
Boadu made his debut for AZ's reserve side at 15 years and 7 months and scored inside 23 minutes. Six goals in his first nine games followed. He was a regular for the Dutch U17s while younger than most of his peers, which is why AZ tied him down to 2023 before anyone could tempt him away. The club knew exactly what they had and couldn't afford an unexpected escape. By the 2019/20 season he was AZ's starting forward with a Europa League knockout run ahead of him, a serious shop window for the continent's biggest clubs, and he was the youngest player in the squad, the only one born in 2001. AZ were making waves in the Eredivisie with one of the youngest squads in the league, and Boadu was the name at the top of every scout's list, ours included.
His style of play, as we saw it then
A nine who could also start from the left, built around runs in behind the opposing defence. Quick, and (the thing that stood out to me most watching him) always aware of exactly where he was on the pitch. His positioning and goal instinct looked natural, not coached. You can teach a young forward where to stand; you can't teach the timing of when to go, and Boadu had it. I compared him to Anthony Martial at the time: quick feet, could dribble past a defender, knew how to finish.
Strengths and weaknesses
The strengths were clinical finishing, determination and a work rate that carried him through the full 90 minutes. He was a nightmare for Eredivisie defenders that season. We'd watched him embarrass a few of them even before the breakout year. The weakness we flagged was the defensive side of his game. Though as I wrote then, how fair is it to judge a striker on a defender's stats? Having played the game myself, I'll say this: at 18 you forgive a striker almost anything if the goals come. And the goals came.
The 2019/20 season that made his name
When we wrote the original profile, Boadu had started every possible match, was playing nearly every full 90, and was leading the Eredivisie top scorers' table. At the time of writing he had contributed to 29 goals (17 scored, 12 assisted) in 28 appearances. At 18. And this after his previous two seasons had been wrecked by two big injuries. He came back from those and went straight to the top of the scoring charts. He'd played at that level all through his youth career, moving from SC Buitenveldert's youth setup to AZ at 12, through the U19s at 15, into the first team at 16. Every age group was too easy for him.
- Leading the Eredivisie top scorers' table
- Senior Netherlands debut, with a goal
- Just 18 years of age
We wrote at the time that we were witnessing a new generation. I put him in a bracket with Mbappe, Havertz, De Ligt and his AZ teammate Calvin Stengs. That list alone tells you how the hype around Dutch football felt in 2019. Credit where it's due, though: AZ Alkmaar trusted their youth and gave him real exposure, and that part of the analysis holds up completely. A club that plays teenagers in must-win league games is a club that develops players, and AZ's academy has kept producing since.
What we predicted, and how it aged
Working off his transfermarkt value of €7.5m in December 2019, we forecast he'd climb towards €25–30m with a strong season. For a good season we listed Leicester, Arsenal, Schalke, RB Leipzig, Valencia, Villarreal and Napoli as landing spots. For a very good one: Dortmund, Bayern, Juve, Inter, Liverpool, Man City, Man United, Real Madrid, Real Sociedad or Barcelona. Our headline call was Manchester United for the 20/21 season.
That didn't happen, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. The lesson I took from it, and it genuinely changed how we build our ratings at Field Insider, is that one explosive age-18 season tells you about ceiling, not certainty. The value forecast, at least, was in the right neighbourhood: we said a strong season would push him towards the €25–30m bracket, and his stock did rise sharply off the back of that campaign. The move he actually made was to Monaco in 2021. Big league, big club, reasonable call by everyone involved. It just didn't work.
Where is he now?
Here's his season-by-season record from our platform data:
| Season | Club | Apps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | AZ Alkmaar | 31 | 15 |
| 2021 | Monaco | 31 | 4 |
| 2022 | Monaco | 12 | 3 |
| 2023 | Monaco | 9 | 1 |
| 2023 | Twente | 11 | 3 |
| 2024 | VfL Bochum | 22 | 9 |
| 2025 | PSV Eindhoven | 13 | 3 |
The table tells the story better than I can. One more strong AZ season, 15 goals in 31, earned the Monaco move. Then three seasons in Ligue 1 that never got going: 4 goals, then 3, then 1, with his minutes shrinking each year. That's the classic shape of a transfer going wrong: not one disastrous season, but a slow squeeze where every year you play a bit less and the goals dry up a bit more. A spell back in the Eredivisie with Twente steadied him, and the 2024 season at VfL Bochum was the real rebound: 9 goals in 22 Bundesliga appearances for a struggling side is proper centre-forward work, arguably harder than scoring for a dominant AZ team playing on the front foot every week.
That form bought him the move back home: he's now at PSV Eindhoven, aged 25, playing centre-forward in the Eredivisie. Which is a genuinely good outcome: not the Man United arc I predicted, but a career that survived a failed big move, and plenty of strikers don't. I've seen what a transfer that doesn't work does to a young forward's confidence. Coming back from that says more about his character than the 2019/20 goal run ever did.
His up-to-date rating and season-by-season data live on his Field Insider scout report. That's the page we keep current, so if you're reading this in another few years, start there, not here.
Summary: our honest opinion
Was Boadu the mega talent we said he was? At 18, in that season, yes. The numbers were real and so was the ability. Did he become one of the world's best, as we predicted? No. He became something more common and more instructive: a genuinely good striker whose peak projection didn't survive contact with a top-five league, and who then showed the resilience to rebuild. If I were writing his profile fresh today, I'd rate the Bochum comeback season higher than the AZ breakout. Scouting isn't just spotting the ceiling. It's watching what a player does when he falls short of it.