On the men’s side, Chelsea Football Club has become something of a punchline. While new manager Enzo Maresca has improved the team more recently, it wasn’t that long ago that pundit Gary Neville was calling us — yes, I’m a not-quite-shameless Chelsea fan — “blue billion-pound bottle jobs.”

But on the women’s side, Chelsea does not mess around. The Blue Lions have won the Women’s Super League for five consecutive seasons and currently look set to make it six, as the club has a 7-point lead at the top of the table, having played over half the season. 

That’s despite the summer departure of legendary manager Emma Hayes, who presided over that five-title run before taking over the United States women’s national team and immediately winning an Olympic gold medal in Paris.

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In short, Chelsea Women shows no signs of slowing down. That has much to do with how well-resourced the team is, as the transfer-fee record-breaking signing of world-class USWNT defender and former Rising Ballers star Naomi Girma proves yet again. But also, Chelsea identifies talent with a success rate few clubs in either men’s or women’s soccer can match. And while she’s far from the most famous or most expensive name in this Chelsea side, 19-year-old Dutch midfielder Wieke Kaptein has proved this axiom yet again. 

Despite joining Chelsea just a week after her 18th birthday, Kaptein arrived in London with no shortage of top-level experience under her belt. She racked up 89 appearances for FC Twente in the Netherlands, including 10 in the Women’s Champions League, before making the move to London. She even made her FIFA Women’s World Cup debut at 17 years old. 

So, she wasn’t exactly a hidden gem plucked from obscurity, but the trust new manager Sonia Bompastor has placed in Kaptein to immediately contribute to a title-chasing team is impressive.

Kaptein has appeared in eight WSL matches, and despite only starting in four of them, she still has two goals and two assists. Her ample Champions League experience has also made her one of the first names on Bompastor’s team sheet in that competition. She started five European matches and contributed a goal and an assist there as well, the latter coming against her former club, Twente (no hard feelings, eh?). 

Her tactical flexibility has certainly helped build Bompastor’s trust in her, as Kaptein is comfortable in both a 4-3-3 formation as a box-to-box No. 8 and a 4-2-3-1 set-up as either the No. 10 or in the double pivot. She has a well-rounded skill set, certainly excelling as a creator in the final third, but also a capable ball-progressor in midfield who can even get stuck into a tackle as required. 

The proof is in the pudding. We’ve already acknowledged Kaptein’s real goal contributions — she averages a goal or assist every 142 minutes across the WSL and Champions League in a Chelsea shirt — but crucially, the underlying numbers back up the quality of her performances. FBref compiles statistical data across what they call the “Women’s Top 9 Competitions” and ranks players in percentiles for each statistic against their positional peers. As one would expect, Kaptein scores quite well.

In terms of expected goals and assists per 90 minutes played — the expected quantity of goals Kaptein contributes per game based on the quality of shots she takes or creates — Kaptein ranks in the 83rd percentile. Similarly, she tallies 3.38 shot-creating actions per 90, defined as any pass, dribble or foul drawn that leads to a shot. 

Those numbers seem particularly impressive when you think about the room Kaptein still has to grow. At 19, she’s not the finished article, and young players can often be accused of trying to do too much. It’s easy to see how, purely from a statistical perspective, that idea applies to Kaptein. 

She takes 4.02 touches in the attacking penalty area per match, putting her in the 98th percentile — absurd! But see how her expected goal and assist numbers lag ever so slightly behind that in terms of her percentile ranking. Imagine if Kaptein manages to convert just a few more of those touches in dangerous areas into goals for her team. 

In a couple seasons’ time, we could be looking at one of soccer’s most dominant midfield players. 

Jack Hallinan is a senior writing about the top wunderkinds in men’s and women’s soccer in his column, “Rising Ballers,” which runs every other Thursday.