Mamadou Jobe is a 22-year-old English right-footed centre-back at Cambridge United, getting his first prolonged involvement in first team league football, as the central or right-sided defender in a back 5, as well as the right-sided CB in a back 4, after joining the “U’s” from Royston Town in 2020.
Jobe stands at around 6’ tall, has an athletic, broad-shouldered build with excellent upper body strength, pace, and acceleration. He’s a physical defender, marks tightly, and is very strong in shoulder-to-shoulder duels. He’s brave in both aerial and ground duels, is a threat in the opposition box at set pieces, and often manages to disrupt his marker with a well-timed push/ shove before having to make a challenge. Despite clear physical strengths, Jobe is currently over reliant on them at times, grappling or trying to disrupt his man when marking and from a stand in aerial duels, rather than keeping track of the ball or using his momentum into the duel to attack the ball like he does in the opposition box, where he’s very difficult to stop once on the move.
In possession, Jobe has the physical attributes to be a strong ball carrier and can combine with short pass and move combinations as the widest CB in a back 5, before underlapping into space. He lacks the close control and first touch consistency when moving at speed to make the most of this, and is currently technically awkward. With the ball at his feet, Jobe has shown the ability to generate power and play longer diagonal switches accurately, and shows some potential with hitting longer passes in behind, but is currently fairly inconsistent with his longer distribution. His short passes can lack in concentration, with more basic sideways passes being played to the backfoot, but again shows some potential to play short to medium length pacey ground passes through the lines into midfield. It is more about consistency in execution and choosing to play these types of passes.
Out of possession, Jobe is physically capable of defending a high line, but despite aggression shows more strength currently as a covering defender, marking tightly, physically blocking runners whilst being able to match them stride for stride, dropping deeper to get the ½ yard over the attacker, and often reacts quickly to rebounds and to drop back onto his goal line and is a strong box defender. He begins to show more inconsistency when moving out of deeper positions, hesitant and slower to react to a dropping attacker, inconsistent with his reading of distances both jumping forward and wide, with a drop in composure when having to defend face up in a 1v1 situation, compared to moving over to push the attacker down the line/ out of play. He can also be caught square on with his body positioning in the last line and caught higher positionally, leaving space in behind and having to rely on others or his physical pace to recover. Despite this, he shows some awareness of the offside line, can lead the defence to push out and scans across when dropping deeper and pushing up, but tends to lack the awareness of runs being made behind him when ball side or jumping to press.
Overall, Mamadou Jobe is a very strong athletic defender, who is brave in defending his 6-yard box, is a threat at set pieces, can play in a high defensive line, can cover both wide and in behind, in a back 4 or 5, with some potential to offer an underlap/carrying threat when in the latter. There are some inconsistencies with his technical abilities, decision-making, and awareness, but this is his first full season in first team league football. Whilst he may be raw, there is certainly potential there. If Jobe can add consistency and bridge the gap between his physical attributes and the rest, I could see him making the jump to play for an EFL Championship lower bottom-half side to a playoff-chasing League One team in the future.
Target Scouting 