Calvin Stengs

Key strength: Pace and dribbling

Wide creator

Perched in 5th place but reeling from five straight defeats, Pisa Sporting Club's playoff ambitions are suddenly under threat—and the €12 million solution has yet to find his spark. Calvin Stengs, the 26-year-old Dutch attacking midfielder heralded as AZ Alkmaar's most gifted creative export, has managed 270 minutes across three appearances since arriving in Tuscany, but the attacking returns remain elusive: zero goals, zero assists. The numbers tell only half the story. With 65-rated vision and passing, Stengs drifts between midfield lines like a quarterback searching for his receivers, threading those deft 60-rated dribbles through compressed defenses. His supporting cast—wingers Johan Bakayoko and Samuel Mbangula, plus the industrious Jacopo Fazzini—crave the incision that Stengs was purchased to provide. For a side that has suddenly forgotten how to win, time is slipping away. The former Netherlands youth international must translate his technical artistry into tangible output before Pisa's season unravels. At €12 million, this was never meant to be a project—it was meant to be the difference.