Major teams are built up over a period of years. The 63rd CIES Football Observatory Monthly Report presents an innovative approach to comparatively assess the sustainability of squads based on three elements: players’ age, the length of their stay in the employer club and the duration of their contracts. According to these criteria, Manchester United currently has the most sustainable squad among the 98 big-5 league clubs.

Manchester United fans can thus be confident in the ability of their team to qualify without too much difficulty for the group stage of the Champions League over the next seasons, and eventually lift again the Premier League trophy. Ranked just behind Manchester United despite having far fewer financial resources, the Basque clubs Real Sociedad and Athletic Club constitute perfect examples of sustainable squad management. Conversely, Genoa is a perfect example of short-term planning.

While football is not an exact science, data analysis can be an important tool with which to optimise performance. The sustainable squad management rating is not just a descriptive tool allowing the comparison of strategies pursued by teams in the past, which is interesting in itself, but also an instrument to steer future policies so as to increase the chances of success. For more information, please contact us.

Issue number 329 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post highlights footballers having won the highest percentage of domestic league matches in which they participated as starting 11 players since the 15th March 2020. The sample covers 42 top divisions worldwide. It only includes footballers who started at least 20 games in their current league (regular season or play-off matches).

The greatest success rate overall was recorded for Red Star Belgrade’s Milan Gaji? (21 wins out of 22 fixtures), while Bayern Munich’s Serge Gnabry leads the table for the big-5 (21/23). The most successful post-COVID players in the other four major European championships are Bernardo Silva (Manchester City) for the Premier League, Mario Hermoso (Atlético de Madrid) for the Liga, Jonathan David (LOSC) for Ligue 1 and Alexis Saelemaekers (Milan) for Serie A.

At the opposite end of the table, Bastian Oczipka (Schalke 04) did not win any of the 23 German Bundesliga matches played as a starting 11 player. The lowest success rates in the other major European leagues were observed for Sam Johnstone (West Bromwich Albion, 2/27) in England, Anaitz Arbilla (Eibar, 2/21) in Spain, Simone Iacoponi (Parma, 2/22) in Italy and Bruno Ecuélé Manga (Dijon, 2/28) in France.

Issue number 328 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post highlights the most promising youngsters worldwide according to the capital experience approach. The latter weights domestic league minutes played by footballers with the sporting level of their teams of employment on a global level. The greatest capital experience since January 1st 2020 for players born in the 2000s was calculated for Borussia Dortmund’s winger Jadon Sancho.

Two other German Bundesliga players complete the podium: Bayern Munich’s Alphonso Davies and Sancho’s teammate at Borussia Dortmund Erling Haaland. Two Englishmen are at the top of the table for 2001-born footballers: Bukayo Saka (Arsenal) and Mason Greenwood (Manchester United). This suggests good prospects for the English national team in the coming years. At the top of the rankings for players born in 2002 is Barcelona’s Pedri González ahead of St. Gallen’s Leonidas Stergiou.

For footballers born in 2003 or after, the highest experience capital gained since a bit more than one year was recorded for Bayer Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz. At second position is another German Bundesliga player eligible for England, Borussia Dortmund’s Jude Bellingham, while two additional Englishmen are in the top six positions: Harvey Elliott (Blackburn, on loan from Liverpool) and Jamal Musiala (Bayern Munich). Should the latter finally opt for England to become world champion?

Issue number 327 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post crunches the InStat data on the direction of passes made during current season by more than 500 teams from 31 European leagues. No club made so far a greater percentage of passes backwards than current Premier League leaders Manchester City: 41.6%. This reflects the emphasis put on possession by Guardiola’s side.

Six other teams from the five major European leagues are in the top 10 positions of the table: Chelsea (4th), Arsenal (5th), Sassuolo (7th), Barcelona (8th), Paris St-Germain (9th) and Real Madrid (10th). The only exceptions are Shakhtar Donetsk (2nd), Lokomotiv Moscow (3rd) and Ferencvaros (6th). Conversely, with only 24.0% of passes backwards, the bottom-ranked Championship team Wycombe Wanderers are at the bottom of this table too.

The more competitive the leagues, the higher the percentage of backward passes. The greatest proportion of passes backwards was recorded for the English Premier League (36.5%). The time for kick and rush is definitely over. This is not that much the case for less performing championships. The lowest percentage of backward passes was observed in the Austrian Bundesliga (29.6%). More statistics at team level are to be found in the CIES Football Observatory Performance Atlas.

Who are the U23 players with the best credentials to make soon their national A-team debut with one of the nations in the 20 top positions of the FIFA rankings? Issue number 326 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post answers this question by considering the experience level that eligible footballers have accumulated during the last year (minutes weighted by sporting level of employment teams or competitions played).

Jules Koundé is the best positioned U23 footballer to celebrate soon his first cap with the reigning world champions of France. The Sevilla’s centre back outranks Moussa Diaby (Bayer Leverkusen) and Boubacar Kamara (Olympique de Marseille). The three U23 uncapped players eligible for England with the greatest experience level over the last year are James Justin (Leicester City), Dwight McNeil (Burnley) and Aaron Ramsdale (Sheffield United).

For the other top nations, Arnaud Bodart (Standard Liège) leads the table for Belgium, Roger Ibañez for Brazil (or eventually Uruguay), Pedro “Pote” Gonçalves (Sporting CP) for Portugal, Marc Cucurella (Getafe) for Spain, Cristian Romero (Atalanta) for Argentina, Gabriele Zappa (Cagliari) for Italy, Florian Wirtz (Bayer Leverkusen) for Germany and Érick Sánchez (Pachuca) for Mexico. The top 20s player for the 20 best-ranked nations are available here.

The CIES Football Observatory just disclosed its second analysis on the demographic profile of players and teams in four Latin American top divisions: Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Chili. The study notably reveals that the COVID-19 pandemic led to a decrease in the average age of players fielded and brought to an increase in the part of club-trained footballers in squads.

The most important changes were recorded in the Argentinean top division, where the percentage of club-trained players has gone up from 22.6% to 34.1% (+11.5%). As a comparison, the percentage of players from clubs’ youth academies among all footballers fielded in domestic league matches is 19.0% in Chile (+1.2%), 18.5% in Brazil (+3.8%) and 13.5% in Mexico (+0.2%). CA Banfield holds the record for the highest percentage of minutes played by club-trained footballers (76.1%).

The study also reveals that CA Boca Juniors is by far the team having trained the greatest number of players present in the four leagues studied: 48, of whom only seven are still at the Buenos Aires club. With 38 players trained, Santos FC et CA Lanús are the second biggest training clubs, just ahead of the Chileans of Universidad Católica and the Argentineans of CA River Plate (37 players trained in both cases). The full analysis is available in the 62th CIES Football Observatory Monthly Report.