The numbers behind Maxim De Cuyper's game

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The defender was involved in 31 goals for Club Brugge.

Liam Tharme

Albion Analytics

2025-07-12T06:00+01:00

Maxim De Cuyper made 114 appearances for Club Brugge. 📷 by James Boardman.

In Maxim De Cuyper, Albion have added another creative threat out wide.

The 24-year-old arrives from Club Brugge in Belgium, where he graduated from their youth academy and captained the under-19s in the UEFA Youth League (the age-group equivalent of the Champions League).

Head coach Fabian Hurzeler mentioned his “great experience” and a “winner’s mentality” from winning the Belgian Pro League, Belgian Cup and Super Cup in his time at Brugge.

His CV features the added quirk of having played in all three UEFA continental club competitions.

Maxim De Cuyper joined Albion on a five-year deal from Club Brugge. 📸 by James Boardman.

He helped Brugge to the Champions League round of 16 last term, starting all 12 matches as they beat Atalanta in the play-off round — having snatched the final qualifying spot (24th) on goal difference.

Villa knocked them out in the round of 16 by a 6-1 aggregate scoreline, though De Cuyper did score the equaliser in the first-leg, underlapping to crash the box for a far-post, first-time finish.

That matched Brugge’s club-record finish from 2022-23, when he was on loan at Westerlo, and recorded an excellent eight goals and six assists in almost 3,000 minutes, finishing as the club’s joint-top scorer.

De Cuyper featured in both legs of the 2019-20 and 2020-21 Europa League intermediate rounds, when Bruges were knocked out by Manchester United and Dynamo Kiev, as both times they had finished third in their Champions League group and dropped down.

Maxim De Cuyper made his Belgium national team debut in 2024. 📸 by James Boardman.

De Cuyper was a semi-finalist with Brugge in the Conference League in 2023-24. He showed both sides of his game that tournament, recording almost identical totals for shot-creating actions (32) as tackles plus interceptions (30), while his 46 crosses were the seventh-most in the competition.

Those trends of balance and creativity are consistent across De Cuyper’s career. Last season he attempted the second-most crosses in the Pro League (194, behind Dogucan Haspolat’s 204 for Westerlo) and ranked third for switches of play (33).

Only Bilal Brahimi of Sint-Truiden (29) completed more crosses into the opposition box than De Cuyper’s 27, and he ranked inside the top ten players in the league for progressive passes too.

He was one of only six players with 100+ shot-creating actions, which is the third season running that De Cuyper has put up at least a ton in that metric. Around one in three of those were from dead-balls, with him their primary set-piece taker.

These Maxim De Cuyper tackles 💪#UECL pic.twitter.com/aVGM6T7ODj
— UEFA Conference League (@Conf_League) July 7, 2025

It was only wasteful finishing from teammates and good opposition goalkeeping that prevented De Cuyper from ending the season with more assists to his name. Three teammates bettered his four assists however the underlying numbers tell a different story.

De Cuyper registered 9.1 expected assists, which is the expected goals value (chance quality) of the shots taken following his key passes.

The only player in the league to be more creative by this metric — a truer measure of creativity as assists rely on a teammate scoring — was Genk’s Jarne Steuckers. He happened to be the only player to come out with relatively fewer assists than De Cuyper based on quality of chances created (6 assists from 11.5xA).

37 - Since making his Jupiler Pro League debut in 2022-23, Maxim De Cuyper recorded 37 goals involvements in the competition (15 goals and 22 assists), the third-highest tally among all defenders in the Top 10 European Leagues over that period. Super. pic.twitter.com/Zm17jPJakj
— OptaJohan (@OptaJohan) July 5, 2025

This is why Hurzeler spoke about “a great reputation for creativity and ability across different positions.” Such output has earned him national team recognition, called up for his senior Belgium debut by then-head coach Domenico Tedesco in June 2024. He was part of the squad at the European Championships last summer, and has scored three times ten caps.

They were three very varied goals: one came off a one-two with Jeremy Doku and an underlapping run into the box before a slotted finish; there was a fine strike from distance following a reworked free-kick; and a back-post header. All in, 26 goals in 158 league games show the threat De Cuyper can offer himself when he is not creating the chances.