soccer · Real Madrid · LW/RW · age 19 · about a year
Yan Diomande — soccer, LW/RW, Real Madrid, age 19. One of 78 entries, each scored on four separate axes rather than given a single grade.
The useful number is accessibility at 85: you can still get in at a price that leaves room between what you pay and the best case. That gap is the whole return.
Card upside (90) sits above the breakout score (76), which is the rarer shape. It means the cards look primed to react even though the step up in performance is less certain — usually because market size, playing style or an existing collector base is doing work the stat line isn't.
Set against the 6 soccer breakout picks scored here, its breakout of 76 ranks 4th of 6, card upside 90 ranks 4th, accessibility 85 ranks 2nd, and risk 44 is the 6th-lowest. The closest thing to it on the numbers is Geovany Quenda, which scores 74 and 88 on the same two axes — if you're weighing one against the other, the difference is in the reasoning rather than the scores.
A one-year horizon means you're betting on a single body of work — one season, essentially. That's a much narrower bet than a career, and it should be sized like one.
A risk score of 44 means ordinary risk — the failure modes are the boring ones, which is also why they're easy to talk yourself out of worrying about.
You can realistically find Yan Diomande cards at the card aisle at Walmart or Target, a local card shop, a card show and online.
This is common enough to turn up on a big-box shelf, so the retail aisle is worth checking before anywhere else — it is the only venue on this list where you are not buying from a reseller.
Show tables and online listings are where individual cards change hands, so those two are always open to you. What varies is whether a shop or a retail pack is a sensible way in as well.
Every entry gets four separate scores instead of one grade, because a single grade hides the thing you needed. Full explanation in the guide: how to spot a breakout before the cards move.
Or browse all breakout picks · how these scores are built
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