Weekly Post’s issue number 416 presents the 100 U23 players outside the big-5 with the highest estimated transfer values according to the CIES Football Observatory’s statistical model. Benfica’s centre-forward Gonçalo Ramos tops the list with an estimated value of about €70 million, ahead of three centre backs: António Silva (€66m), Gonçalo Inácio (€62m) and Jurriën Timber (€57m).

Maarten Vandevoordt (Genk on loan from RB Leipzig) tops the list for goalkeepers (€20m), Devyne Rensch (Ajax) for full backs (€23m), Kenneth Taylor (also Ajax) for midfielders (€49m), while the top figure among players outside Europe was recorded for Yuri Alberto (€35m) of Corinthians. The top 100 estimated values for last November and non-big-5 league players under 25 years of age is available here.

>>> Current top 100 U23 list

Issue number 415 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post ranks 76 leagues worldwide according to the number of cards per match handed out by referees since 1 January 2020. Bolivia’s Primera División tops the list (7.01 cards per game with 0.55 reds), while Japan’s J2 and J1 leagues are at the opposite end of the spectrum (1.99 cards per match with just 0.05 reds).

Seven Latin American leagues rank in the top nine in terms of total number of penalty cards, the only exceptions being Portugal’s Primeira and Segunda Liga. At the opposite end, Japan’s top two divisions are ahead of the top two leagues from the Netherlands. England’s Premier League Championship, League One and League Two are also at the bottom of the table, confirming the low propensity of referees across the Channel to issue penalty cards.

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Issue 414 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post ranks 126 associations worldwide according to the average age of their senior men’s national team line-ups fielded in the last year. The maximum was recorded for Kuwait (29.76 years), while the minimum was observed for Bahamas (22.82 years). In Europe, the values range from 29.40 years for Belgium to 25.07 years for Turkey.

The three lowest values among last FIFA World Cup participants were measured for the USA (24.74 years), Ecuador (25.78 years) and Ghana (25.97 years). All three selections have a bright future ahead. Overall, the share of minutes of players aged 21 or under is 10.2%, compared to 32.7% for 22-25 year olds, 31.5% for 26-29 year olds and 25.6% for 30 year olds or over.

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The loan of players is a practice much in vogue in professional football. The 83rd edition of the CIES Football Observatory Monthly Report analyses the characteristics of 3,178 players currently on loan in 75 leagues from 57 associations worldwide. It notably shows that loans concern 9.5% of players, with record percentages at around 20% in Italy.

The report also highlights that loans do not just involve footballers at the start of their career. Indeed, less than 30% of the total number of players on loan are 21 years of age or under, while almost half are 24 or over. This shows that loans are not uniquely used with the aim of developing the potential of young players, but also for several other reasons, such as making room in squads or signing reinforcements without paying transfer indemnities.

Many big-5 league teams figure among the clubs who loan out the most players present on the 1st March in the 75 leagues analysed. Arsenal tops the list with 25 footballers loaned out, followed by Atalanta. Inter, Brighton & Hove Albion, Manchester City, Juventus, Chelsea and Wolverhampton also are in the top 10. Generally speaking, the more competitive the club, the more it tends to loan out players to other teams.

In 63.5% of cases, the clubs where players are loaned have a lower sporting level to the owner clubs. This result indicates that loans principally serve the interests of the wealthiest teams, by allowing them to control the career of more players than they could have in their squad and develop. The club multi-ownership strategy, increasingly used by dominant teams, only reinforces this process.

>>> Full Report

Issue number 413 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presents the top 100 clubs in the world according to the estimated value of transfer rights held on players in the squad, on loan to other teams or sold with a sell-on percentage. Manchester City top the list with the ownership of transfer rights on no less than 46 players for a total estimated value of €1.46 billion.

Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid complete the podium, ahead of three other English teams: Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. With transfer rights held on players corresponding to €264 million, Brazil’s Flamengo are the highest ranked non-European club. More information on the CIES Football Observatory’s statistical model for estimating the transfer value of professional football players is available in this scientific paper.

>>> TOP 100

Issue 412 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post analyses WyScout data on domestic league assists made by players in 75 championships around the world over the last 365 days. By weighting the number of assists with the sporting coefficient of the matches played, Kevin De Bruyne comes out on top ahead of Ousmane Dembélé and Lionel Messi.

With 12 assists and a weighted score of 13.8, which puts him in sixth place overall, Dejan Kulusevski tops the list among U23 players. Sebastián Villa (Boca Juniors) is the top ranked player currently active in a South American league. In purely numerical terms, without weighting assists by the sporting level of the matches played, with 19 assists in last year domestic league matches, three players are at the top: Dušan Tadić (AFC Ajax), Ahmed Sayed ‘Zizo’ (Zamalek SC) and Emil Hansson (Heracles).

>>> Top 100 assistmen worldwide