Toral Bayramov

Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, Toral Bayramov has been one of the standout players for Qarabağ FK at the start of the season. In all the competitions he’s played in for the Azeri club, he has seven goals and five assists in 21 games, which means he’s played an average of around one hundred and fourteen minutes to have a direct impact on the result. Whether as a left-back, right-back, or right-winger, the 23-year-old has put in good performances, something that has earned him a call-up to Fernando Santos’ national team – for Azerbaijan, Toral has four goals in 28 international appearances.

Morphologically mesomorphic, Bayramov is a slender player, quick, easy to accelerate, and very agile, something that has a direct bearing on the nature of his game and which is automatically linked to his versatility in occupying various positions on the pitch. As a player who is always connected to the flow, he can perform the different types of physical effort that the game demands, including using his body to withstand the physical loads of his opponents in one-on-one duels.

If his athleticism allows him to be versatile, his technical ability and cognitive ability give him even more versatility. In other words, Toral Bayramov is a complete all-round player, something that enables him to play in any area of the pitch. The young Azeri is gifted on the ball, making him a tricky player to defend against, especially when he adds body feints to his attacking game – inherent to the fact that he is agile. His left foot is exquisite when it comes to finishing passes, which he can do with any part of his foot. He tends to exploit the spaces between the men in the opposing defence line to look for team-mates who break into the space at the back of that line. His crossing technique points to a type of cross launched when he plays as a right winger, i.e. after being free of pressure, he usually executes the cross with a curve that meets the second post of the goal and which, if he doesn’t find a team-mate, tends to pass very close to the goal. If he plays on the opposite side, his crosses are still directed towards the second post, but the ball curves away from the goal. He’s a player who can combine in short spaces, but who can also create whatever he wants through the individual side of his game.

In short, he’s an intelligent player. This is particularly evident when he plays as a right-back. In that area of the pitch, when he receives open play, he can annihilate the opposition’s pressure and make diagonals from outside to inside on the run, exploiting the back pressure he was subjected to seconds before and allowing the team to progress: he does this above all by trying to link up directly with the winger on the opposite side via a long ball through the air, or by linking up with the winger on the opposite side via a low long pass. Without his intelligence, he could never be so versatile, and obviously, his technical and physical skills complement this.

Toral Bayramov is building on the last few months of last season and his numbers prove it, something that will be crucial if he is to leap to another competitive level. The move to more advanced areas of the pitch has influenced this, but it’s not an isolated factor, as the twenty-three-year-old’s decision-making has been on the rise. Therefore, if we add last season to the first few months of this season, it’s possible to envisage a change of scenery for the Azeri player. The ideal scenario could be an initial move to countries like Belgium or the Netherlands. After that, his performance would dictate his future. I believe that, given his potential and his growing performance, both domestically and in European competitions and with the national team, it’s time for him to leap.