In December 2019 we published a scouting profile on Lindon Selahi and called him FC Twente's mega talent. Bold words for a 20-year-old holding midfielder in a newly promoted side. Six and a half years later, this is one of the old reports we most wanted to revisit honestly: what we saw then, what we predicted, and where our platform data says he actually ended up. Some of it holds up well. Some of it does not, and we will get to that part too.
The player we profiled in 2019
The Eredivisie was the place to shop for midfield talent back then. Frenkie de Jong had just left the league for Barcelona, and every scout in Europe was combing the Dutch top flight for the next one. Our pick at Twente was Selahi: born in Namur, Belgium on 26 February 1999, a right-footed central midfielder of 180cm who was equally comfortable sitting deeper as an out-and-out six.
His backstory was a big part of why we liked him. He started playing football at four years old with local clubs before Standard Liège picked him up in 2011, and the detail we loved most was that he scored on his debut against Anderlecht in a winning side. He signed his first professional deal with Twente on 6 June 2019, and it was only a one-year contract, which we complained about at the time. By December he had already made 15 appearances and scored once. Internationally he had four passports' worth of options: Belgium, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Albania all wanted him. He chose Albania and made his senior debut in a Euro 2020 qualifier in October 2019, at 20 years of age.
What we saw then
Selahi read the game like a player five years older. He could cover both the defensive and the attacking duties of a central midfield role, drew fouls high up the pitch, and liked a clever layoff when the chance appeared. But his real value was in the dirty work: tackling, anticipation, committing the smart foul at the right moment and in the least dangerous area, and rarely losing the ball to the opposition. We compared him to Wilfred Ndidi of Leicester at the time, which tells you the type. I played semi-pro football in Malta, and I can tell you that players like this are the ones a dressing room trusts long before the crowd ever notices them.
Strengths
- Tackling and anticipation, the traits scouts and managers flagged first
- Ball retention under pressure, with tidy short passing and intelligent layoffs
- Leadership well beyond his years for a 20-year-old in a promoted side
Weaknesses
We flagged the long, precise pass as the missing piece, along with balance and raw strength. Our view was that a specialist midfielder can build those attributes with dedicated training, and that plenty of good careers have been built on exactly his profile. He was never going to be the man who splits a defence from 50 metres, and we said so.
His 19/20 season, as we watched it
Twente had just been promoted back to the Eredivisie with a stated plan to build around young players, and Selahi was central to it. He played nearly every available minute, the team went unbeaten through its first six matches, and even when form dipped mid-season they looked comfortable in the top flight. We called him Twente's crown jewel. What he needed, we wrote, was simply experience, and Twente looked like the perfect platform to get it.
The road that got him there
Part of why we backed him so hard was the journey. His youth career was restless in a way we found telling:
- 14/15: Standard Liège youth to RSC Anderlecht youth
- 15/16: Anderlecht youth to Anderlecht U17
- 16/17: Anderlecht U17 back to Standard Liège reserves
- 18/19: Standard Liège reserves to the Standard Liège first team
- 19/20: Standard Liège to FC Twente
He had attracted the two biggest clubs in Belgium and settled at neither, because he wanted minutes rather than a badge. Plenty of coaches doubted him along the way, and he struggled for years to pin down a proper professional contract before Twente finally offered one, and even they would only commit to twelve months. We wrote at the time that we were his fans, plainly, that his was an amazing story of a player chasing every lead he could get, and that hunger like his usually finds a level.
What we predicted
Here is where a revisit gets uncomfortable, so let's do it properly rather than quietly skip it. Transfermarkt, whose profile of him is still online, valued him at 0.6 million euros in December 2019. We forecast 1.25 million after a good season and 2.5 million after a very good one, tied to him racking up appearances and minutes. For his next move we listed Willem II, SC Heerenveen, AZ Alkmaar, Augsburg and the big Belgian clubs, with Heerenveen or AZ as our headline call for 20/21.
Half credit. Selahi did leave Twente for a Dutch mid-table club the very next season, and it was Willem II, one of the exact names on our shortlist. Our data logs 21 Eredivisie appearances for him there in 2020/21. The other half of the prediction, the steady climb toward a bigger league and a multi-million valuation, never materialised. To be fair to our younger selves, the same 2019 article also said we might never see him at Europe's big clubs but that he would become a very good midfielder with a stable future. That sentence aged a lot better than the transfer forecast.
Where is he now
Our platform currently has Selahi at Widzew Łódź in the Polish Ekstraklasa. The seasons in our database tell the story in two snapshots, one from just after our original article and one from today.
| Season | Club | Apps | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020/21 | Willem II | 21 | 0 |
| 2025/26 | Widzew Łódź | 24 | 1 |
So the 2026 picture is a 27-year-old defensive midfielder playing regular top-flight football in Poland: 24 league appearances and a goal in 2025/26. Our records are quiet on the years between Willem II and Widzew, so we will not fill that gap with guesses. What the two data points show clearly enough is the level he settled at. It is not the Ndidi path we sketched. It is also not failure, and anyone who calls it that has never tried to make a living from this game. He has stayed a starter in a competitive European league into his late twenties, and everything we admired about him, the constant moves, the refusal to settle, the appetite for minutes, is still visible in the shape of his career. You can follow his current numbers and rating on his Field Insider scout report.
Our verdict, then and now
"Mega talent" was too strong, and we own that. "Very good midfielder with a stable future" was right on the money, and both sentences sat in the same 2019 article. That is the lesson we keep relearning as scouts: trust the floor you can actually see, not the ceiling you are hoping for. A tackler with elite anticipation and average passing range projects to exactly the career Selahi has had. Steve and I built this platform partly so the data would keep us honest about calls like this one. Selahi built a real career out of tackling, anticipation and stubbornness, the exact three things we listed as his strengths when he was 20. The prediction business humbled us here, but the scouting held up. We said we were his fans then. Seven years and four leagues later, we still are.