★ Moneyball Original · Opinion
Donyell Malen at Roma: how he became one of Serie A's top five forwards, read with ten Moneyball methods
By Moneyball Editorial · published
Donyell Malen has 8 Serie A goals in 575 minutes for Roma, and 3 goals and 3 assists in 3 Champions League matches. Since his move to Roma he has gone from a forward Aston Villa could do without to one of the most productive attackers in Italy, and the numbers say it is not a hot streak.
Every season has a player whose goals arrive before anybody has a word for them. In Italy this autumn it is Malen: quick, two-footed, happiest drifting from the left into the inside-right channel, and suddenly scoring at a rate that puts him alongside the league's established strikers. The question Moneyball asks is the one a sporting director would: is this real? Are the chances behind the goals as good as the goals, does he do it against Europe's best, and what is he worth to Roma in points? Ten methods, one verdict.
1. The season so far
| Season 2026/27 | Matches | Minutes | Goals | Assists | xG | Goals − xG | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serie A | 9 | 575 | 8 | 1 | 7.02 | +1.0 | 7.30 |
| Champions League | 3 | 236 | 3 | 3 | 2.17 | +0.8 | 7.98 |
| Both | 12 | 811 | 11 | 4 | 9.19 | +1.8 | 7.50 |
Across Serie A and the Champions League Malen has 11 goals and 4 assists in 811 minutes: a goal involvement every 54 minutes. His 9.19 expected goals say the goals are earned: he is scoring at the rate his chances deserve, the most sustainable kind of season a forward can have.
2. Among Serie A's best, per 90 minutes
Totals favour the players who have played most. Per 90 minutes, among every Serie A player with 400 minutes or more:
| # | Player | Club | Goals + assists per 90 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Donyell Malen | Roma | 1.41 |
| 2 | Nikola Krstović | Atalanta | 1.34 |
| 3 | Adrien Rabiot | AC Milan | 1.30 |
| 4 | Gustavo Varela | Monza | 1.18 |
| 5 | Marcus Thuram | Inter | 1.16 |
| 6 | Tijjani Noslin | Lazio | 1.10 |
| 7 | Antonio Raimondo | Frosinone | 0.98 |
| 8 | Kevin De Bruyne | Napoli | 0.91 |
Nobody in Serie A is involved in more goals per 90 minutes than Malen. On total goals he is 2nd, behind Gustavo Varela, who have all played more minutes.
| # | Player | Club | Expected goals per 90 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Donyell Malen | Roma | 1.10 |
| 2 | Marcus Thuram | Inter | 0.83 |
| 3 | Nikola Krstović | Atalanta | 0.62 |
| 4 | Antonio Raimondo | Frosinone | 0.61 |
| 5 | Anastasios Douvikas | Como | 0.61 |
| 6 | Kevin De Bruyne | Napoli | 0.56 |
| 7 | Gonçalo Ramos | AC Milan | 0.53 |
| 8 | John Yeboah | Venezia | 0.48 |
The second list matters more: he is 1st in Serie A for expected goals per 90. The chances are elite before he takes them.
3. Against Europe's forwards
| Measure (Serie A and Champions League) | Malen | Percentile among Europe's forwards |
|---|---|---|
| Goals per 90 | 1.22 | 98th |
| Expected goals (xG) per 90 | 1.02 | 98th |
| Goals and assists per 90 | 1.66 | 98th |
| Shots per 90 | 5.3 | 98th |
| Key passes per 90 | 2.1 | 88th |
| Dribbles per 90 | 2.2 | 89th |
| Match rating | 7.50 | 92nd |
Percentiles against every forward with 450 minutes or more in the five leagues and the Champions League. 5 measures in the top tenth: the profile of a complete forward, scoring, creating and carrying the ball, not a specialist.
4. The Champions League test
The fairest test of a player in a new league is the competition where the opponents do not change. In the Champions League Malen has 3 goals and 3 assists in 236 minutes, with a match rating of 7.98. Moneyball Scout now reads a European minute above a league minute, and the Champions League above every league, so these nights are part of his score, not a footnote to it.
5. What his chances are worth to Roma
Roma create 2.21 xG a match and allow 1.31: through the Match Board's Dixon-Coles matrix a match played like that is a Roma win 57% of the time, 1.93 points. Malen's own chances are 0.70 of that xG per match. Give those minutes to an average Serie A forward (0.34 xG per 90) and Roma win 47% of the time, 1.65 points a match. Over a 38-match season that is about +10.7 points before a single chance is finished, the gap between the Champions League places and the Europa League.
6. Roma around him
Roma have 24 points from 10 matches (3rd). Expected points put their football at 18.9; the Pi-rating ranks them 1st, and their shrunk xG margin plays out to about 72 points (2nd).
7. Scouting Players Research: the report
Donyell Malen, 27, plays as a centre-forward for Roma in Serie A. Strongest for his role in expected goals and shots. Weakest in aerial duels won.
| Scouting Players Research | Donyell Malen |
|---|---|
| Role and type | Centre-forward, poacher |
| Moneyball Score (league and European cups, adjusted for strength) | 71 |
| Rank among the centre-forwards of 16 leagues | 30th of 1150 |
| Rank among the centre-forwards of his league | 4th of 51 |
| Moneyball Value (estimate) | €16.4M to €51.2M (mid €33.8M) |
| Age curve: score in 1, 2, 3, 4 years | 74 · 74 · 74 · 71 |
| What Scouting weighs for his role | Percentile among centre-forwards |
|---|---|
| Expected goals | 99th |
| Goals | 98th |
| Shots | 98th |
| Shot quality (xG per shot) | 83rd |
| Aerial duels won | 4th |
| Shots on target | 66th |
| Duels won | 16th |
| Key passes | 84th |
The players most like him
| Most like him in Scouting | Club | Similarity |
|---|---|---|
| Raphinha | FC Barcelona | 93% |
| Luis Suárez | Sporting CP | 93% |
| Harry Kane | FC Bayern München | 87% |
| Casper Tengstedt | Toulouse | 87% |
| Kylian Mbappé | Real Madrid | 87% |
A Moneyball Score in the 70s is the level of a starter for a Champions League contender, and 30th of 1150 puts him in the top 3% of centre-forwards across 16 leagues.
The Moneyball verdict
Yes, the numbers put Malen among Serie A's top five forwards. The chances behind his goals are elite, he has done it against Champions League opposition, and his chances alone are worth around +11 points a season to Roma. The caution is the usual one: the minutes are still few, and Scouting's score is shrunk toward the average until they grow. But this is no longer a player looking for a role. It is a forward a club builds its attack around.
- Expected goals (xG): the quality of every chance, so a team is judged on what it created and allowed, not only on what went in.
- Finishing and goalkeeping regression: goals against xG at both ends. A big gap either way rarely lasts a season.
- Per-90 leaders: Serie A's goals and assists and expected goals per 90 minutes, among players with 400 minutes or more.
- Percentiles: his figures per 90 against every forward with 450 minutes in the five leagues and the Champions League.
- European weighting: Champions League minutes read at the competition's own level and weighted above a league minute.
- Dixon-Coles points value: Roma's xG through the score matrix, with his chances and with an average Serie A forward's in the same minutes.
- Expected points: each match's xG run through a Dixon-Coles score matrix (the Poisson model with the low-score correction the Match Board uses) to give the points a performance usually earns.
- Pi-ratings: a rating for every club at home and away, moved after each result by how far the goal margin beat or missed what the ratings expected.
- Projection: the shrunk strength played out against an average opponent for every match left, added to the points already won.
- Moneyball Score, value, age curve and similarity (Scouting Players Research): every figure that matters for his role as a percentile against his position across 16 leagues.
Analysis by Moneyball Editorial. His move to Roma is background from published reports; every number is read from the Sportmonks data at each update, and the sentences around it change with it.
Donyell Malen in the Stats Centre Donyell Malen in Scouting Players Research
Questions
- How many goals has Donyell Malen scored for Roma this season?
- 8 in Serie A in 575 minutes, plus 3 goals and 3 assists in the Champions League, from 9.19 expected goals across both.
- Is Malen one of Serie A's best forwards?
- On goals and assists per 90 minutes he leads Serie A among players with 400 minutes or more. Moneyball Scout gives him a score of 71, 30th of 1150 centre-forwards across 16 leagues.
- What is the Moneyball Score?
- Scouting Players Research's rating out of 100: every figure that matters for a player's role, as a percentile against his position across 16 leagues, with the league and the European cups each read at their own level and small samples shrunk toward the average.
- Where do the numbers come from?
- Sportmonks match, team and player data, read by the Moneyball engine and Moneyball Scout and updated with every update of the site.