★ Moneyball Original · Scouting
Wael Mohya: Gladbach's record-breaking 17-year-old is in Klopp's Germany squad. Do the numbers agree?
By Moneyball Editorial · published · updated
Wael Mohya is 17. He is already the youngest player ever to appear for Borussia Mönchengladbach, at 16 years, nine months and 28 days, and the club's youngest ever goalscorer, after an 89th-minute goal against Bayern Munich last season. This month Jürgen Klopp named him in the Germany squad for the first time.
Records like those tell you a player arrived early. They do not tell you how good he is. A coach can give a teenager five minutes at the end of a lost match and a record falls. The harder question, and the one a club or a national coach has to answer, is what he does with the minutes he gets.
This column does what Moneyball always does with a story like this: it puts the numbers under it. Twelve methods, the Stats Centre for the player and for his club, and the report from Scouting Players Research. Everything is explained in plain words, so you do not need to know what xG means before you start.
How to read this, in plain words. The Moneyball Score is a number from 0 to 100. It asks one question: compared with every player in the same position, how much does this player do of the things his position is there to do, for every 90 minutes he plays? Around 50 is an average regular. Above 70 is a starter for a club in European competition. Above 85 is among the best in the world. Potential is where the score is expected to go as he ages, from the way players in his position usually develop. Moneyball Value is a fair transfer fee worked out from his score, age, position, league and minutes. A young player with few minutes is deliberately scored with caution: the model would rather be late than fooled.
1. His season so far
| 2026/27 | Bundesliga | League and European cups |
|---|---|---|
| Minutes | 535 | 535 |
| Matches | 9 | 9 |
| Goals | 2 | 2 |
| Assists | 1 | 1 |
| Expected goals (xG) | 2.16 | 2.16 |
| Goals per 90 | 0.34 | 0.34 |
| xG per 90 | 0.36 | 0.36 |
| Shots per 90 | 2.5 | 2.5 |
| Key passes per 90 | 1.5 | 1.5 |
| Successful dribbles per 90 | 2.7 | 2.7 |
| Average match rating | 6.76 | 6.76 |
Wael Mohya has played 535 Bundesliga minutes for Borussia Mönchengladbach: 2 goals and 1 assist. Totals flatter players who play more, so scouts divide by minutes and multiply by 90: what would he do in one full match? Per 90 minutes he scores 0.34, which is 25th of the 47 forwards in the league with 270 minutes or more.
2. Expected goals: were the goals deserved?
Expected goals (xG) gives every shot a value between 0 and 1: how often a shot like that goes in. A penalty is about 0.76. A shot from 30 metres is about 0.03. Add up a player's shots and you get the goals an average finisher would have scored from his chances.
His chances have been worth 2.16 xG and he has scored 2. The two numbers are close, which is the healthiest sign there is: he scores what his chances are worth, with no luck holding the total up. On xG per 90 (0.36) he is 28th of 47 forwards in the league. He also creates: 1.5 key passes per 90, 18th of 47. A key pass is a pass that leads straight to a team-mate's shot. And he beats his man 2.7 times per 90, 3rd of 47.
3. How much should we trust so few minutes?
This is where most hype goes wrong. 535 minutes is about 6 full matches. Moneyball treats a small sample the way a careful scout would: it believes it only in proportion to its size. He has 45% of the 1,200 minutes the model wants, so it pulls his score toward the average of his position by the missing 55%. If he keeps this level, his score rises by itself as the minutes come: about 8 more full matches and it is read at full strength. This is called Bayesian shrinkage, and it is the reason Moneyball does not crown a new star every weekend.
4. Scouting Players Research: the report
Wael Mohya, 17, plays as an attacking midfielder for Borussia Mönchengladbach in the Bundesliga. Strongest for his role in successful dribbles and expected goals. Weakest in through balls.
| Scouting Players Research | Wael Mohya |
|---|---|
| Role and type | Attacking midfielder, shadow striker |
| Moneyball Score (league and European cups, adjusted for strength) | 42 |
| Rank among the attacking midfielders of 16 leagues | 271st of 655 |
| Rank among the attacking midfielders of his league | 27th of 30 |
| Moneyball Value (estimate) | €9.8M to €31.0M (mid €20.4M) |
| Age curve: score in 1, 2, 3, 4 years | 49 · 54 · 59 · 64 |
| What Scouting weighs for his role | Percentile among attacking midfielders |
|---|---|
| Key passes | 20th |
| Expected assists (est.) | 26th |
| Big chances created | 36th |
| Expected goals | 64th |
| Successful dribbles | 84th |
| Shots | 54th |
| Through balls | 6th |
| Fouls won | 48th |
The players most like him
| Most like him in Scouting | Club | Similarity |
|---|---|---|
| William Balikwisha | OH Leuven | 88% |
| Gaetano Oristanio | Torino | 87% |
| Abdellah Ouazane | Ajax | 85% |
| Facundo Buonanotte | Elche | 84% |
| Cian Ashford | Cardiff City | 83% |
The table of percentiles is the heart of the report. Each line is one thing his position is there to do, and the percentile says how many players in the same position he beats at it, out of every 100. Green is elite, red is a weakness to work on. The "players most like him" are found by comparing the whole pattern, not one figure: they are the players whose strengths and weaknesses have the same shape as his.
17. The club around him: Borussia Mönchengladbach
| Measure | Borussia Mönchengladbach | Rank of 18 |
|---|---|---|
| League position (points) | 4 pts from 9 | 18th |
| Expected points (from xG) | 9.5 from 9 | 14th |
| Pi-rating (goal margin vs average) | −0.19 | 18th |
| Strength after shrinkage (xG margin per match) | −0.36 | 14th |
| Projected final points | 33 | 18th |
Borussia Mönchengladbach are 18th in the Bundesliga on 4 points from 9 matches. Expected points, the points their chances usually earn, rank them 14th. They have 5.5 points fewer than their football deserved, so the table undersells the side he plays in. A player's numbers depend on his team: a forward in a side that creates little gets few chances, however good he is, and a defender in a side that is always under pressure looks busier than he is. Borussia Mönchengladbach create 1.65 xG a match and allow 2.34.
18. What he is worth in points
The most useful question in recruitment is not "how good is he?" but "how many points does he add?". Moneyball answers it by replaying the club's season twice through the Dixon-Coles model, once with his chances and once with an average Bundesliga forward's in the same minutes. With him, a match played like Borussia Mönchengladbach's is won 27% of the time; without him, 28%. Over a season that is about −1.4 points.
19. Why Klopp did not wait
National coaches rarely call up 17-year-olds, and when they do it is seldom for what the player is today. It is a bet on the curve. Germany are starting again under a new coach, and Klopp has a long record of trusting young players before others would.
The age curve in Scouting Players Research makes the same bet in numbers. Players in his position usually gain most between 17 and 21, and gain it fastest when they are already playing first-team football. From 42 today the curve takes him to about 64 within four years. That gap is what Klopp is looking at.
There is one more reason, and it is the simplest. He is already getting Bundesliga minutes: 535 of them this season. A teenager who trains with a first team is a prospect. A teenager who plays in one of Europe's five strongest leagues every week is a footballer.
For what it is worth in money: Moneyball Value puts a fair fee between €9.8M and €31.0M today, and the age curve says the number rises with him. It is an estimate from his figures, not a price anyone has quoted.
20. What the numbers cannot see
A fair column says where its method stops. The numbers do not see how he trains, how he lives, how he reacts to a bad month or what the coach asks of him in a given match. They do not see an injury coming. And they are only as good as the minutes behind them. What they do well is remove the two things that fool people most often: the highlight clip, which shows the best ten seconds of a player's month, and the reputation, which says more about his club's fame than about him. Use the score as a careful first opinion, then watch him play.
The Moneyball verdict
The records are real, and so is the caution. A Moneyball Score of 42 is modest, and it is meant to be: with 535 minutes on file the model holds back 55% of its judgement. What can be said is that nothing in the figures contradicts the excitement. Watch the minutes, not the headlines: every 90 he plays makes the number more certain.
- Per 90 minutes: every figure divided by minutes played, so a substitute and a starter can be compared fairly.
- League-strength adjustment: Moneyball Scout weighs a season in Ligue 1 at 0.90 of the same season in the Premier League (Serie A 0.95, La Liga 0.96, Bundesliga 0.94).
- Bayesian shrinkage: with few minutes a figure is pulled toward the average of his position, so three good matches are not mistaken for a great player.
- Last season at 70% weight: last season's figures are blended in, a little lighter than this season's.
- Percentiles within his position: a centre-back is ranked against centre-backs, a winger against wingers. The 90th percentile means better than 90 of every 100.
- Role templates: each position is judged on what it is there to do; a striker on chances and goals, a full-back on defending and crossing.
- Position familiarity: where else he could play, from where he has played.
- Win-rate impact: the points he adds to a club over a season, by replaying its matches with and without him through the Dixon-Coles model.
- 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.
- 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.
- Age curve: how players of his position usually develop year by year, used for his potential.
- Moneyball Value: a fair fee from his score, age, position, league and minutes.
Analysis by Moneyball Editorial. The records (youngest Mönchengladbach player at 16 years, nine months and 28 days; youngest Mönchengladbach goalscorer, against Bayern Munich on Matchday 25 of 2025/26) and his first Germany call-up in November 2026 are as published by bundesliga.com. Every figure is read from the Sportmonks data at each update, and the sentences around it change with it.
Wael Mohya in the Stats Centre Wael Mohya in Scouting Players Research Borussia Mönchengladbach in the Stats Centre
Questions
- Who is Wael Mohya?
- Wael Mohya, 17, plays for Borussia Mönchengladbach in the Bundesliga. This season he has 2 goals and 1 assist in 535 league minutes.
- How good is Wael Mohya on the numbers?
- His Moneyball Score is 42 out of 100, 271st of 655 players in his position across the leagues Moneyball follows. The age curve projects about 64 at his best in the next four years.
- What is Wael Mohya worth?
- Moneyball Value puts a fair fee between €9.8M and €31.0M. It is an estimate from his score, age, position, league and minutes, not a quoted price.