Heart of Midlothian have completed the signing of Albanian winger Sabah Kerjota, the player arriving from Italian lower league outfit US Sambenedettese.
Kerjota has signed a three-year deal, becoming the club's seventh signing of the summer.
Our resident analyst Tom Irving provides the lowdown on the 23-year-old.
My work in football takes me (virtually) to matches in leagues all over the world. Whether it’s through my role as a recruitment analyst for Finnish club SJK, where I scour the globe to find new talent, or through College Scout USA, my new project helping young UK players secure scholarships to play college soccer in the United States, I’ve built up a broad exposure to different playing styles and ability levels.
So when Hearts were first linked with a player from the Italian fourth tier, I had to stop and think if I’d ever actually watched that league before. After digging through old scouting notes, I realised I was going in completely blind, which isn’t something that happens often.
Serie D
Now, the first thing to note when looking at the level of the Italian Serie D is the structure of the league. Serie D is split regionally into nine groups. In the 24/25 season, it had 168 teams participating. This is a big indicator that we are going to see a vast difference between the top and bottom teams in the league system.
Kerjota’s club, Sambenedettese, won their group with relative ease, finishing 10 points clear with a significantly better goal difference. So we know that at least he was contributing to one of the better teams in the league, but how does the rest of his group fit into Scottish football?
According to Opta’s data, there are only a couple of clubs in Serie D - Group F that would be comparable to teams in the Scottish Championship, with the majority of them looking to be more of a League 1 standard.
From what I’ve watched, this is quite accurate. There are some standout players and some brilliant bits of play, but there’s also a lower level of athleticism than Kerjota will see in Scotland, as well as a lot of frantic football, which may actually be handy when moving to the fast pace of the Scottish Premiership
The league gets some good attendances, with Sambenedettese averaging over 6,000 noisy fans per home game.
The data
When running Kerjota through my ranking systems, he ranked first in his group in comparison to all wingers who played regularly, and 14th when compared to all 220 regularly playing wingers across the entirety of Serie D.
The gap from 14th to the top five was very small, with only a tiny amount separating the fifth from the 20th.
Looking at those who finished above him, we only saw older players, mostly over 30, who were either veterans at the level with seasons upon seasons of experience, or players who had recently dropped down from a much higher level within the Italian game. In other words, he’s the only promising young talent among the top 15 wingers in Serie D.
I’ve compared Kerjota’s data to both his group and the entire Serie D, and because the percentiles are very similar, I’ll only refer to his data within his own group for now. When looking at his attacking data, Kerjota scores a non-penalty goal every three games, outperforming his expected goals of a goal every four games.
His conversion rate is good at 13.3 per cent and paired with his high number of shots per 90 minutes, it leads me to believe that he’s not afraid to take shots that aren’t a certainty. He also provides an assist every four games, which is right in line with his expected assists.
In possession, we see similarly impressive data. Three of the lower percentile numbers are in the success rates of his through balls, crosses and dribbles. This is understandable considering he leads the league when it comes to through balls and crosses and is in the top 17 per cent for dribblers per 90. The more you do it, the more likely the success rate drops.
Kerjota also leads the league in passing to the penalty box and has a very impressive success rate of 51 per cent, showing that he doesn’t just whip crosses in, he’ll also get into good positions to find passes into the box. This will help add to his high number of shot assists and touches in the box.
The eye test
In the first minute of the first match I watched, Kerjota and his teammates pressed intelligently, leading to the Albanian picking up a loose ball. He burst down the right wing, flicked the ball and jumped over an aggressive slide tackle before using his pace and direct running to get past the full back and into the box, eventually finding his striker for an easy finish.
Kerjota played in different roles in the two games I watched, both against opposition from the top end of the table. In the first game, he was utilised as a right winger in a 4-2-3-1 formation, and in the second game, he was on the right of a midfield four in a 4-4-2.
While the formation and role were slightly different, his performance was consistent. Physically, he’s small, yet tenacious. He’s quick, especially over short to mid ranges and runs at high speeds a good amount throughout the game, both in and out of possession. This leads me to believe he has good fitness levels, although he is playing at a less physically demanding level.
Out of possession, he showed intelligence when starting or joining in a press. Not only was he intelligent, he also worked hard in these situations. He joined presses high up the park, worked back and helped defend, and at one point chased back a counterattack, making up a lot of ground on the attacker, before taking one for the team, fouling the player to stop the attack.
Obligatory goal and assist video…
— Irving Analysis (@IrvingAnalysis) July 3, 2025
He’s scored and assisted a lot, so I’ve cherry picked these a bit from the last 2 years
A lot of his goals are simply from arriving late in the box or at the back post for a tap in which isn’t a bad thing. It’s just not as exciting to watch! https://t.co/GIflj2jvu2 pic.twitter.com/VWU8xPFZdh
Even though he was impressive off the ball, we saw more of his good qualities when he was involved in possession. He’s good at creating his own opportunities to attack, with his impressive ability to know where to be to pick up a loose ball.
He does well to use his first touch effectively to take advantage of these loose balls and is very comfortable receiving dodgy or unexpected passes. When receiving the ball in a wide position, he’s got two main tactics.
Firstly, he will look to go down the line or drive into the box on the outside of the defender. He’ll use pace, quick footwork and body feints to do this, with nothing incredibly fancy. At times, he reminded me of Suso Santana in that aspect, even though Suso did love a stepover.
His other main tactic is to cut in and quickly whip an inswinging ball into the box. He did this from all over the right wing, both high up the park and from deeper positions. This whipped inswinging cross was seen at attacking corners also, with a good delivery for all of the right-sided corners in these games.
He wasn’t just a two-trick pony on the wing, though. I witnessed a brilliant outside of the left foot cross from a hard angle and also saw him cutting inside to drive at defenders. On one occasion, he beat two players simultaneously with ease after cutting inside and making a beeline for the box.
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He showed intelligent passing on several occasions, whether it was back-to-back one-twos down the wing to progress into dangerous areas before being forced into a wrestling match in the corner - which he won against a bigger player - or a good first-time dinked through ball to find a teammate making a third man run.
I would say that at times he doesn’t put enough on some of his passes, usually his through balls, but this is a minor and very coachable issue.
We saw this when he picked up a ball from a defensive corner close to his own box. He got an awkwardly bouncing ball under control whilst running at pace, using his head and thigh to get the ball down to the ground. He held off a player who tried to drag him back with a cynical foul before shrugging him off and continuing to drive forward. At this point, he played a through ball that was so very close to being brilliant, but just didn’t have enough on it.
It’s hard to get an idea of the psychological side of a player's game through video scouting, but we can make some assumptions. His high work rate and fight were positive and even though he gets kicked and pulled often, he only managed to get into one minor argument with an opposition player, which is promising.
In conclusion, he is an exciting winger who looks like he can provide a spark and pace to the team's attack. How quickly that will be the case will depend on how he adapts to making the step up from Serie D.
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