There haven’t been many occasions where Heart of Midlothian have entered the Slovakian market to sign a player. In fact, since the formation of the Slovak League in 1993, there’s been only one signing directly from Slovakia to Gorgie, when Róbert Tomaschek joined from Slovan Bratislava in 2000.
Until now.
On Wednesday, Hearts announced the signing of the Greek winger Alexandros Kyziridis from MFK Zemplín Michalovce on a three-year deal. He will join on the back of an impressive season in the central European country, scoring 14 goals and assisting eight times in 26 appearances.
On paper, a very appealing signing. But what do we know about the club's potential new Hellenic Hero, and the league that he has called home for three years?
The Niké Liga is probably fairly unknown to most Scottish football fans, and that’s understandable given it’s a fairly new league, and there haven’t been many matches between Scottish and Slovak clubs.
The two ties of note both involved Celtic, coming in the form of a 5-4 aggregate loss in 2005 to Artmedia Bratislava [now rebranded as FC Petržalka and playing in the second tier], and more recently their 5-1 win against Slovan Bratislava in this season's Champions League.
For this reason, most comparisons will be subjective, and in my opinion, I think the leagues are pretty similar in quality. Slovan Bratislava would probably have split the Old Firm this season, with Zilina, Spartak Trnava and DAC pushing for third spot. Several teams would be scattered across the rest of the league, with the worst Slovak clubs potentially being more comparable to the likes of Falkirk or Livingston.
As far as 'making the step up', I don’t think there is much stepping to do. The main difference in the leagues would be stylistic, with the Scottish game being a faster-paced, more physical league.
JTA - Just Toms Analytics…
With the link-up with Jamestown Analytics entering its first summer window, Hearts fans understand that some of the highest quality data in world football will be doing a lot of the legwork to find players going forward.
So what did JTA see in Kyziridis?
I did things a little bit differently from my normal routine this time round - the high-level stats from this season in Slovakia, like goals and assists, showed obvious attacking ability and would most likely lead to other data that would be favourable.
Instead, I looked at a previous, less impressive season to see if anything was underlying that showed up even when he wasn’t banging in the goals. So, due to his lack of game minutes in the 2023/24 season, we looked back at his stint in Hungary with Debrecen in 2022/23.
While the data isn’t incredible, he shows up very highly for his dribbling and offensive duel data, taking the ball on runs often and being successful the majority of the time. Across the rest of the graph, he shows up decently, with his main issue being the obvious lack of goals. If he could just improve his shooting accuracy and therefore his goal-scoring ability, this graph looks pretty exciting.
Now, as expected, his data from this season is impressive.
When we look at the attacking portion of the graph, he features in the top 20th percentile for seven of the nine metrics, and the top 40th percentile for the remaining two. His non-penalty goals per 90 are extremely high, and very close to his expected goals per 90.
In comparison to his time in Hungary, he’s got to this point by drastically improving his shooting accuracy, which has, in turn, improved his goal conversion rate, allowing him to showcase his Spider-Man celebration where he mimes shooting webs.
While his assists per 90 and shot assists per 90 are two of his poorer metrics in this section, his expected assists are very impressive, which shows that he is creating good chances and they aren’t always being converted.
When we look at his possession data, it looks less impressive, but it can be explained. The metrics where Kyziridis seems to struggle are to do with success rates of different parts of his game, like dribbling, offensive duels, through passes and crosses. Often, when players are attempting more risky actions like dribbling at players or finding inch-perfect through balls, we see the success rate naturally drop off. This data tells us that he’s a highly creative player who’s given a lot of freedom to make things happen for Michalovce.
The Eye Test
I started by watching clips on Wyscout of several parts of his game, focusing on when taking on players, taking the ball in tight spaces and creative passes. He immediately struck me as a blend of two current Hearts players - almost like the perfect combination of both. Let’s see if you can guess, and I’ll reveal all later on in the article.
The first thing I noticed was his intelligent close control and ability to beat a player. He does use the odd bit of skill, and I noted a fair amount of successful nutmegs, but in general, he uses quick, deft body feints to aid in his deceptive dribbling.
One minute he’s standing up a player, the next he’s by him as if by magic. Now, some players can do this almost effortlessly, and even though he makes it look simple, he definitely has an intensity and electricness that makes him so effective at beating a player. This is helped by his low centre of gravity and exceptional agility.
Whilst he’s not got a ridiculously quick top speed, he is very quick over short distances with sharp turns. He uses this low centre of gravity paired with his aggression in both his defensive and offensive duels, making him pretty strong in comparison to his size.
On one occasion I saw him go shoulder to shoulder with a player twice his size and after three or four mutual shoulder barges, he came off victorious and the ball rolled out for a Michalovce goal kick.
Now, even though he seems to love to dribble with the ball, he’s definitely not a ball hog. He’s just as happy to play quick one-touch passing and moving to find space for himself or his team-mates, something that doesn’t show up on the data.
After watching clips, I went on to watch Kyziridis play against a couple of the better teams in the league, DAC and Spartak Trnava, to see how he would fare against a top-six standard Scottish team. While he took up a very wide left position a lot of the time, he had the habit of popping up in central positions, or even closer to the right side of the pitch.
He had a bit of a free role in that respect, as his movement into these areas wasn’t dependent on other things happening on the pitch, like a central player being dragged out wide or the full back overlapping. He simply saw a good open space and moved into it to get on the ball and create something.
When on the ball in a wide position, he preferred to cut in onto his right foot and find a pass into the box or a pass laterally, but did also look comfortable going down the line on occasion. I see him as more of an inverted winger than an out-and-out old school winger.
On one occasion, when he picked up the ball and moved in centrally, he used a brilliant outside-of-the-foot pass over the top to find his striker with a through ball. He didn’t look to be overwhelmed by the situation of playing against teams higher up the league, and was very comfortable when under pressure.
On a couple of occasions under heavy pressure, he used a first-time flick to get out of pressure and complete a one-two to help set off attacks. He later picked up a ball with two players around him and used quick feet and awareness to get away from both of them, before a third popped up out of nowhere and tackled him.
He also picked up the ball deep from a poor, high clearance in his own half, took the ball down perfectly with his first touch with an opponent on his back, before keeping composure and finding a team-mate to get the ball out of danger.
The highlight of these matches came from a goal you may have seen on social media in the last couple of days. A long ball was played over the top, which looked to be under control by the defender with no one around him. Kyziridis anticipated the defender's pass back to the keeper and chased the ball before it was even kicked. The defender mis-kicked the pass back, and Kyziridis managed to get to it and score with a lovely first-time chip over the keeper from outside the box.
An article on Kyziridis is coming out soon on @HeartsStandard_ , but for now just enjoy his goal from Tuesday… pic.twitter.com/LWfJiMxXim
— Irving Analysis (@IrvingAnalysis) May 22, 2025
Before I get on to the two players he reminds me of, I have two concerns. Firstly, even though he had an exceptional season this year and did well in his previous seasons in Slovakia, he did struggle when he moved up a level to play in Hungary. This may be nothing, but it is something fans need to be cautious of.
Secondly, the majority of his goals and assists came against the lesser teams in the league. On paper, this is a worry, but when you look at things a little deeper, it eases the worries a bit.
Michalovce aren’t traditionally one of the better teams in the league. Last season, they narrowly missed out on relegation after winning the relegation play-off match against FC Petrzalka. This season, they finished seventh, which may have been a lot down to how Kyziridis played. Without him, they could well have been in a relegation battle again.
If he were playing for a better team with better players around him, he may well have scored or assisted more often against the big teams.
So the players he reminds me of were a combination of Kenneth Vargas and Barrie McKay. He has the tenacity, agility, and electricness of Vargas, as well as his confidence to try things in games like taking the risky shot, or trying to beat a player or two.
This is backed up with the ability to effortlessly drift by players like McKay does, and the vision and skill to find good passes and actually convert the risky shots he takes. McKay has shown he can score goals, but seems to avoid taking these shots.
Take the goal against DAC as an example. This feels to me like a choice of shot that Vargas would take, but maybe wouldn’t have the skill to pull it off. A skill someone like McKay has.
Hearts will hopefully be witnessing plenty of Spider-Man celebrations over the next three years.
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