How AKARI Analytics identified two future Premier League strikers — before they became known to the general public.
Before they made the headlines, strikers Hugo Ekitike and Nick Woltemade were standing out quietly — not in the news, but in the AKARI Analytics algorithm.
During the 2020–21 season in Denmark's Superligaen, current Liverpool striker Hugo Ekitike was loaned out by Stade Reims to the small Danish club Vejle BK. In a limited number of appearances, Ekitike left his mark by standing out as one of the top-performing strikers on created chances and expected goals in Denmark that season. On the scatterplot in the AKARI platform, Ekitike situated himself in the top-right corner — the statistical home of strikers who don't just finish chances, they create them too.
Moreover, Ekitike also stood out on our AKARI Potential metric, which highlights players with the highest growth margin based on their impact per game.
Two years later, the same algorithms highlighted another exceptional profile — Nick Woltemade, then playing in Germany's 3. Liga with SV Elversberg and now with Newcastle United. His AKARI Potential and Skill scores topped all strikers in the entire division in the 2022–23 season. Woltemade — a rare striker profile that combines length with refined technique — displayed a data profile that, despite playing outside the top two tiers of German football, was seen by our model as a striker for the highest level.
For AKARI, these examples underscore what our team set out to prove: that data, when structured correctly, can reveal genuine talent long before the market does.
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