Scouting: Tom Bischof
Germany has no shortage of talented midfielders... Bischof is another one of them.
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TSG Hoffenheim’s inconsistent performances finally catched up with the club. After managing to finish 7th at the 23/24 Bundesliga (despite conceding 66 goals in 34 games!), they’ve struggled to put together a series of positive results at the beginning of the new season: as of last weekend, they were 15th at the Bundesliga and 19th at the UEFA Europa League. What happened then? Coach Pellegrino Matarazzo got sacked and was replaced by Sturm Graz’s Christian Ilzer — in just two months, TSG Hoffenheim took their sporting director, Andreas Schicker, and their manager. Dethroning RB Salzburg at Austria does attract a lot of attention, I guess.
Starting the season in such a bad way naturally doesn’t reflect well on the players. However, German fans have got at least one thing to be happy about: Tom Bischof’s emergence as an undisputed starter. A high-level technician, the 19 year-old is one of the best talents in Germany’s 2005 group and got what it takes to be a really good player for club and country across the next decade.
History
Bischof isn’t an unknown player to those who follow German youth football closely. He came up at one of the best academies in Germany and has always been one of the hottest names at Hoffenheim (Tim Drexler and Umut Tohumcu being two youth-level teammates who have also racked lots of professional appearances already) and attracted a lot of interest with his performances at Under-17 and Under-19 levels for Germany (there, he played alongside names like Laurin Ulrich, Paul Wanner and Nelson Weiper, other local wonderkids).
The hype surrounding him grew even more when he became Hoffenheim’s youngest player ever in the Bundesliga, making his professional debut at just 16 years and 8 months, under Sebastian Hoeness in March 2022 — he played 13 minutes in a 3-0 loss to Hertha Berlin. Considering all German clubs, only Youssoufa Moukoko (Borussia Dortmund) and Paul Wanner (FC Bayern) were younger than him when they played their first Bundesliga game. Some bigger clubs tried to poach him, but he ended up renewing his contract at Hoffenheim until 2025 (that means he’s out of contract this summer!). After that, however, professional minutes were hard to come and Bischof had to play mainly for youth and reserve sides. Across the next two seasons, he racked up 479 minutes in the Bundesliga, scattered between 24 games: an average of only 19 minutes per game.
All of that changed when the 24/25 season came. Upon recovering from a slight knee injury, Bischof came from the bench against Bayer Leverkusen in the third round of the Bundesliga and hasn’t looked back since, starting all but one game (a DFB Pokal match against second division FC Nürnberg) for Hoffenheim, including four Europa League ties.
Roles and positions
Under former coach Pellegrino Matarazzo, Hoffenheim almost exclusively played in a 3-4-2-1/3-4-3 system. Bischof, mostly an attacking midfielder at youth levels, played as part of a double pivot, taking positions on both sides of the pitch, varying from game to game. He’s left-footed and stands at 1.76 meters.
We still can’t say for certain what’s going to happen under new coach Christian Ilzer, but in his first game for Hoffenheim he deployed a 4-2-3-1, with Bischof as a left-sided midfielder. At Sturm Graz, the 4-3-1-2 were his favorite formation. Bischof shouldn’t have any problems adapting to both options, if needed.
Build-up movement
Besides being a fairly direct player (in passing and movements patterns), Tom Bischof’s most notable quality is his ability to progress plays and create chances from left-footed passes. Taking a deeper position on the pitch has allowed him to be more involved in the game, contributing to different phases, from build-ups to final third actions: he’s super active in that regard.
Starting from central positions, he tends to drop laterally to both sides, getting the ball outside the opponent’s block before attempting to break their lines. Upon receiving a pass, he usually attracts pressure from at least one opposing player and then tries to find teammates with short diagonal passes. This was a recurring pattern in Hoffenheim build-up and creative phases.
Passing range
1. Right-sided passes
His passing skills are better exploited when playing off the right-hand side. Why? Well, for starters, most of the time he controls the ball using his dominant left foot, opening up his body to the center of the pitch (from the right side, that is his back foot). This sequence of movements helps take the ball away from his closest marker, creating just enough space for him to be able to hit diagonal passes or switches of play without needing to further adjusting his body shape — assuming he gets the ball directly facing the opposite goal, the passing angle offered to him would require an additional hip rotation to hit the same pass, taking precious milliseconds away.
Watch in the example below, how he turns his body before receiving and then lets the ball roll to his left-foot before hitting a first-time pass.
Some other examples of him opening up his body to create that space between the ball and his closer marker. That way, he’s able to avoid incoming pressures and possible interceptions.
2. Left-sided passes
When he drops to the left side of the pitch, now his left foot is closer to his incoming marker. Furthermore, if he does try to hit a diagonal pass from that position, the ball would travel closer to that marker (unless it was a trivela pass), making it a more difficult one to complete.
This is essentially what makes his passes more risky in these scenarios and the reason why he has shown himself to be more conservative when playing off the left-side of the pitch, playing bounce or lateral passes more frequently. As I said before, he’s got that directness to his game, so, in some instances he will still attempt more vertical passes (like in the example above), but they are less common and completed at a lower rate, I feel.
3. Switches of play and diagonal long passes
When receiving directly in the center of the field, he can activate teammates on both sides of the pitch with long diagonal passes, targeting runs into space. He got some work to do on the overall weight of his passes, but that’s something that surely will come with time, as he also gathers a better understanding of his teammates and how they run.
4. Through balls
Besides having the technical skills to complete difficult passes, even under pressure, Bischof also has the vision to identify runners in behind from distance. He can hit some really good through balls, be it diagonally or in a straight line. His first assist of the season, against VfL Bochum, depicts exactly what he’s capable of, taking seven opponents with a single pass.
That meshes well with the vertical nature of his game. He’s such a direct player that he will frequently try to move his team up the pitch immediately upon recovering possession, even if it means hitting riskier passes. He’s obviously gonna lose some balls trying to do that, but one could argue that the amount of chances he generates by that is more than enough to compensate for.
Set pieces
His ball-striking skills have earned him the spot as the set-piece taker at Hoffenheim, despite being the youngest player of the squad. He is able to generate threat taking corners from both sides, as well as free-kicks. Right now, he’s creating around 1.20 chances per game via dead-ball passes alone.
Shooting
Playing in a deeper role, finishing chances haven’t been that common for Bischof: he’s averaging 1.58 shots per 90, most of them coming from the edge of the box, trying to place the ball in the upper corner. Just like in set-pieces, his ball-striking technique looks good and I’m confident that he could be a competent long-range shooter, given his history as a youth player.
In fact, when I first wrote this, I said that a first professional goal wouldn’t take too long to happen… he scored last weekend, not only from his favored position, but also taking a set-piece!
Attacking runs
After helping in the initial build-up phases, Bischof likes to target the half-spaces when hitting the box (carrying the ball himself or running to receive a pass), especially if Hoffenheim are progressing into his side of the pitch. His timing on that is quite good and he’s always instigating something, with or without the ball.
Defensive actions
He is quite an aggressive player when defending, constantly jumping out of his line to press opponents and engaging in duels to get the ball back. He is particularly good at reading miss-touches/poor body shapes and then attempting tackles…
but he can be overaggressive sometimes, leaving space behind him. When he messes up his timings, not only his opponent is able to turn under pressure to hit a pass, but Bischof also does not possess the raw speed or the long strides to recover that space quickly, leaving his team unprotected.
These inconsistencies are quite natural for a player so young, especially if we bear in mind that he came up as an attacking midfielder. However, it is nice to see someone so gifted with the ball at his feet work so hard out of possession: that’s the makings of a great player.
Final thoughts
Overall, Tom Bischof is a creative playmaker that is always trying to make something happen, with or without the ball. That relentlessness is a feature of his game and one of the things that set him apart from other players. He definitely does have the potential to be an international player… with him and others like Aleksandar Pavlovic and Angelo Stiller, Germany are looking quite stacked in the middle of the pitch right now.
He’s now truly established as a professional footballer and is probably one of the best young players in the Bundesliga today. Unfortunately for Hoffenheim, that came in the last year of his current contract and other clubs are circling around (talent-gobblers Eintracht Frankfurt and RB Leipzig being two of them), trying to sign him on a free. It will take some convincing to keep him, but the amount of minutes he has been getting might seal the deal in Hoffenheim’s favour.
That’s all for today. If you enjoyed this report, please drop a like, subscribe and share it so more people can see it. Appreciate any kind of support. Until next time!