NTT20 Scouts: Brits Abroad — USA, Canada, Belgium, Austria and beyond
It’s hot, it’s holiday season — and NTT20 Scouts is heading overseas to assess British talent making waves across the world.
Sam Parry & Craig Bradley
“Oh yeah, I’d forgotten all about him…”
Sam Parry: There is a slightly retro feel to today’s scouting bulletin. Many of the players listed here are recent EFL graduates, which means it somehow feels like both a million years ago and yesterday that we were talking about them. These Brits Abroad – or more accurately, UK nationals plying their trade in other countries – come with one obvious added benefit for EFL clubs: no faffing with visas, ESCs nor GBEs. Just bring them home…
Sam Surridge, 27 (ST) - Nashville
🚀 Ceiling — With links to yo-yoing clubs, the level above?
🧱 Floor — Wrexham, Birmingham, Wolves
🎯 Sweet Spot — West Ham
Interested parties will need to stump up some cash for Sam Surridge, because he signed a new deal with Nashville just a few months ago. Naturally, that reduces potential Championship destinations to those with parachute payments and/or deep pockets. The question is: would spending relatively large sums be worth it? We reckon so.
Surridge knocked about these parts for a while, always promising a lot but never quite delivering the standout season. As a teenager, he joined Yeovil Town from Bournemouth. His path from there?
2017/18 — Yeovil (L2): 53 apps, 10 goals, 5 assists
2018/19 — Oldham (L2) / Bournemouth (PL): 22 apps, 12 goals, 3 assists
2019/20 — Swansea (CH) / Bournemouth (PL): 28 apps, 8 goals, 0 assists
2020/21 — Bournemouth (CH): 35 apps, 6 goals, 1 assist
2021/22 — Stoke (CH) / Nottingham Forest (CH): 47 apps, 12 goals, 3 assists
2022/23 — Nottingham Forest (PL): 27 apps, 3 goals, 2 assists
Surridge’s reputation suffered a little due to circumstance. He left a Bournemouth side whose rise up the leagues limited his opportunities. He left a Stoke side where he burned bright but faded, as they once again finished somewhere mid-table (not fact-checked; not fact-checking it). And he left a Forest side that gave him only one league start following their promotion to the Premier League.
In each situation, he “failed” – quote marks in the air – to become the main man, primarily because of the situation. But let’s not forget that he was still in his early twenties, and still learning.
Since heading to MLS in 2023 (one month after Lionel Messi did), Surridge has become one of the league’s premium strikers. For Nashville, he has produced 61 goals and 8 assists in 99 appearances, including a standout 31-goals-in-all-competitions season in 2025, placing him 3rd in the list of top scorers, behind Messi.
In 2025, six of those goals were scored in the US Open Cup, the most of any player, including a goal in the final to win the thing. And what of today? In 2026, no player has a better goals-to-minute ratio than Surridge’s 1.76 goals per 90 minutes, having scored nine times from just 19 shots in MLS.
Main man energy, then. Aura? Would’ve thought so.
And he could be a huge player in the Championship, bringing together a toolkit that has matured over time, as it was always likely to – especially because Surridge was probably typecast as a target man, due to his 191cm frame. Really, he is a finisher who happens to be tall; a classic No.9 who is now much more comfortable being something of a target.
Destination-wise, Wolves have been linked with a move in the past, but they’ve recently signed Raul Jimenez again. Let’s cross them off. There is a lot of talk about Birmingham and Jay Stansfield. If he were to leave, Surridge might make a lot of sense given the Blues’ business in the January window, where they seemed to change tack from a more technical profile to something better-equipped to spam crosses to big strikers. But we think there’s a more appropriate Brit abroad to fill any Stansfield-shaped hole that might arise (see the next player on the list).
Surridge fits the profile of a Kieffer Moore or a Sam Smith at Wrexham – and, of course, there is a USA angle there. It makes almost too much sense.
But we reckon West Ham might be the goer. With only Taty Castellanos and Callum Marshall under 30, you would expect them to enter the market to replace Callum Wilson (34) and Niclas Füllkrug (33). A goalscoring striker at a very good age, in a very good team, who have kept a very good manager in Nuno Espirito Santo, feels like a very good match.
Max Dean, 22 (ST) - Gent
🚀 Ceiling — Middlesbrough
🧱 Floor — Bristol City, Preston
🎯 Sweet Spot — Birmingham
The last time we saw Max Dean in England, he was part of an MK Dons side thrashed 8-1 over two legs by Crawley. He scored that solitary consolation, which speaks in a small way to his finishing ability. He also received a three-game ban for violent conduct after the match, which speaks in a big way to his sometimes unpredictable temperament.
Anyhow, if you cast your mind back to 2023/24, you may recall one of the premier EFL talents absolutely smashing it in League Two: