PSV have a long habit of producing outstanding players. Names in the club's history books like Memphis Depay and Coen Dillen, who scored 288 goals for the club, tell you how productive that academy is. Back in late 2019 a special kid from Eindhoven sprang out of the shadows and caught our eye. Cody Gakpo. He was just 20.
What we saw then (player profile)
Date of birth: May 7 1999
Place of birth: Eindhoven
Nationality: Netherlands (also Togo, Ghana)
Height: 187cm
Club at the time: PSV Eindhoven
Position: Left winger (also right winger)
Preferred foot: Right
Who was Cody Gakpo back then?
Gakpo had made his professional debut on November 6, 2016, and had been racking up starts ever since. Born in Eindhoven, of Togolese and Ghanaian descent, he was having the breakthrough of his young career that season. Across the 19/20 campaign he made 27 appearances, scoring 4 and setting up 6, and he already had a Dutch championship and a Dutch U17 title to his name. Plenty banked for a 20-year-old.
His style of play
Gakpo was a determined player who fought for every battle, and his physique made that look easy. Blessed with natural fitness and pace, he was more of a team player than an individual performer, and his height gave him an edge over his markers. I remember writing that he was a nightmare for most defenders because he carried an attacker's full toolkit.
His vision to find teammates was the standout: as a winger he was setting up more than he scored. That is why we filed him as a team player rather than a showman. At the time we said his game read like Eden Hazard and Daniel James combined.
His strengths
Part of the reason we reached for the Daniel James comparison was how easily he found teammates with a cross. Add explosive pace and all-round technique and you had a genuine attacking threat. The young forward also owned a fantastic first touch, sharp vision, and balance on and off the ball. His teamwork tied it all together.
If your side played like Klopp's Liverpool, built on collective work, players like Gakpo fit straight in. That line reads differently now, and I will get to why.
His weaknesses
As an attacker he was far more invested in his attacking output than his defending. His off-ball work rate was poor, and he had real defensive flaws in tackling and man-marking. Those gaps were the flip side of a player built to create rather than to graft.
The 19/20 season, as we read it
Gakpo had featured in most of PSV's matches that season, mainly as a rotation option, though he started plenty through the middle after Donyell Malen got injured. He was already showing he was a worthy forward, and at 20 he was clearly a real asset. The refined technique and the burst of pace made him a joy to watch. Credit to PSV Eindhoven, not just for developing him but for trusting a young player with that pressure. They spot potential and grow it inside their system, and they are good at it.
PSV had developed a long line of talents, and Gakpo was another one on that flawless record. They built a system that grows youngsters and gets the most out of them, and he was a pure product of it. That season was a real breakthrough, one strong performance after another, scoring and assisting on a steady basis. His form even earned him a Netherlands U21 call-up the season before, where he scored 2 in 5. I was sure his time would come to graduate from an important rotation player into an essential starter.
Consistency was his thing. Coming through the youth ranks he had scored 25 goals with 11 assists in 52 matches, often against older players, then followed it with strong Eredivisie output early in his senior career. That is impressive stuff for a lad who had only just turned 20. I wrote at the time that I had no idea what I was doing at 19, and I certainly was not playing at that level. He was quietly excellent and slipping under the radar, much like his teammate Donyell Malen had before his own breakout, and we were confident Gakpo's season would come the same way.
Our prediction back then
Here is where I have to own it. Back then we tied his market value to minutes on the pitch, and courtesy of transfermarkt we had him at 6 million in December 2019. We expected 7 to 8 million at the next update, and reckoned that if he racked up around 40 appearances across 19/20, and crucially the minutes, he could climb toward 9 million. A good season of roughly 20 games out of 40 pointed to about 8 million, a very good full season to around 10 million. Modest numbers, in hindsight.
On the move itself, we backed him to stay at PSV for 20/21 and have a big season, then pencilled in a switch to Olympique Lyonnais for 21/22, with Arsenal watching from a distance before committing. We floated a German move to Borussia Dortmund, an Italian move to Inter, Roma or Napoli, and an English switch too. Our headline call was Lyon. We got the trajectory right and the destination badly wrong. That is fine. Owning a miss is part of scouting, and the reality turned out far bigger than our dream move.
Where is he now
Gakpo did not go to Lyon. He stayed and exploded at PSV, then moved straight to the Premier League with Liverpool, the exact club whose style we said suited him. He has become a first-team regular there, playing across the front line, which is a long way from the rotation winger we were watching in Eindhoven. Here is his senior career as it sits in our data.
| Season | Club | Apps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020/21 | PSV Eindhoven | 23 | 7 |
| 2021/22 | PSV Eindhoven | 27 | 12 |
| 2022/23 | PSV Eindhoven | 14 | 9 |
| 2022/23 | Liverpool | 21 | 7 |
| 2023/24 | Liverpool | 35 | 8 |
| 2024/25 | Liverpool | 35 | 10 |
| 2025/26 | Liverpool | 36 | 7 |
For our current breakdown of his ratings, position data and form, see the full Cody Gakpo scout report.
Our verdict, then and now
We said Gakpo was a huge talent, lethal on the flanks and just as dangerous as a centre-forward, scoring and assisting with rare consistency, and that a big breakthrough would pull a crowd of clubs toward him. That part landed. We even played what we called a wild card and predicted the following season would be the one that made his name. It was. He was sitting in the shadows in 2019, and he shone through the moment the chance came. Remember the name, we wrote at the time. The name we should have written next to it was Liverpool, not Lyon. Turns out we should have set the ceiling higher, and that is a mistake I am happy to have made.