In the English Premier League, at the top of the rankings are two Liverpool (Suárez, Coutinho) and three Swansea players (Britton, Chico, Rangel). This finding suggests that the Welsh club should be able to further improve its results until the end of the season.

In Spain, Barcelona beats Real Madrid 3-2: Xavi, Alves and Mascherano versus Ronaldo and Di Maria. Only three footballers in the top 3 of their respective position do not play for the three best ranked teams: Rakiti? (Sevilla), Angulo (Granada) and Galvez (Rayo Vallecano).

In France, PSG players head three rankings out of five: Ibrahimovi?, Thiago Motta and Thiago Silva. Two very promising footballers top the table for offensive midfielders (Benjamin André) and full backs (Serge Aurier). Both have the ability to play in more competitive teams or leagues.

In Germany, Bayern Munich players are ranked first in four tables out of five: Kroos, Schweinsteiger, Rafinha and J. Boateng. However, the best performing forward was Anthony Modeste, who also scored against the Bavarian side during last week-end.

In the Italian Serie A, at the top of the rankings for forwards is the best scorer of Torino Ciro Immobile. Another Torino player, Giuseppe Vives, tops the table for central and defensive midfielders. Barrientos (Catania), Jonathan (Inter) and Paletta (Parma) head the remaining tables.

Our metrics measure players’ pitch production and efficiency in six complementary areas of the game.

CIES Football Observatory key performance indicators

Shooting: ability to take advantage of goal opportunities through accurate shooting

Chance creation: ability to create goal opportunities through efficient passing

Take on: ability to create dangerous situations by successfully challenging opponents

Distribution: ability to hold the grip on the game through efficient passing

Recovery: ability to minimise goal opportunities for opponents through proficient ball recovery

Rigour: ability to minimise goal opportunities for opponents by efficiently blocking their actions

Data in each area are weighted according to the impact on club results per position. Consequently, for example, rigour is more important for centre backs than forwards, while the opposite holds true for shooting.

This fidning demonstrates the existence of a strong big-5 league club internal market. It also shows that the redistribution effect of the transfer system throughout the entire football pyramid is limited.

The club which generated the most income from the transfer of squad members to big-5 league clubs was Tottenham Hotspur (322 million €), closely followed by Spanish giant Real Madrid (304 million). Only five non big-5 league teams are among the 30 clubs that generated the most transfer incomes since 2008/09: Porto (3rd), Palermo (12th), Benfica (16th), Ajax (26th) and Portsmouth (28th). Conversely, many rich teams are ranked in the top 20 positions of the table: Liverpool (4th), Milan (5th), Inter Milan (6th), Arsenal (8th), Roma (9th), Barcelona (15th), Manchester United (17th), Chelsea (19th) and Manchester City (20th).

While the majority of the above-mentioned clubs also spent significant fees to sign new players, our findings show that the current transfer system cannot counter the growing competitive imbalance between clubs at different levels of the league structure. It also suggests that teams with a track record of training new players are not sufficiently rewarded financially as the most lucrative transfers mainly occur between the wealthiest clubs.

Moreover, the growing number of transfers highlighted in the CIES Football Observatory Demographic Study 2014 shows that the current transfer system does not efficiently prevent contract instability. On the contrary, players’ mobility is on the increase. This goes hand in hand with the expansion of third-party ownership deals, through which private investors are entitled to shares on future transfer fees. This further undermines the redistribution role of the transfer system throughout the football pyramid.

Our analysis highlights that reform of the current transfer system is needed. An efficient solution would be to redistribute any transfer income to all clubs where a footballer has played during his career according to the total number of matches played for each club. This would ensure a fairer distribution of money to the whole chain of clubs that allowed the player to develop his career before attracting interest from the richest teams. The CIES Football Observatory academic team is at your disposal to undertake simulations for different redistribution scenarios. For more information, please contact us at football.observatory@cies.ch.

The employer club whose footballers played the most minutes of World Cup qualification matches is Real Madrid, followed by six other big-5 league clubs: Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City. The highest ranked club not participating in the big-5 leagues is Zenit St-Petersburg (8th), while the first non-European team is Esteghlal FC of Iran, in 14th place.

Big-5 league teams represent two thirds of the 30 top ranked clubs. In total, 48.9% of minutes played were by footballers under contract with top division teams in England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France. This finding reflects the high concentration of national A-team players in the most competitive European championships.

All national teams qualified fielded players employed by big-5 league clubs. However, the percentage of minutes played by big-5 league footballers was below 25% for Australia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Iran, South Korea and Russia. These nations will most probably struggle to qualify for the knockout stages.

We hope that you will enjoy the new statistics presented in our 2014 World Cup Preview and we stay at your disposal for more analysis at football.observatory@cies.ch.

France is the country with the highest number of locally born players fielded by clubs in the five major championships since the start of the season (440), followed by the four other nations hosting the big-5 leagues. However, only 181 players born in England played in the big-5 so far this season.

The most represented foreign origin overall is Brazil (117 players). At league level, the most represented foreign nations are France (45) in England, Argentina and France (29) in Spain, Brazil (20) in France, Czech Republic (14) in Germany and Argentina (51) in Italy.

Next week we will present exclusive data sourced from the upcoming 2014 World Cup Preview. For more information about this publication, please contact us at football.observatory@cies.ch

In the four other leagues covered, the most productive players were as follows:

Spain: Lionel Messi, Andrés Iniesta, Sergio Busquets, Adriano Correia and Aymeric Laporte

France: Zlatan Ibrahimovi?, Grégory Sertic, Geoffrey Kondogbia, Gregory van der Wiel and Loïc Perrin

Germany: Mario Mandžuki?, Mario Götze, Thiago Alcântara, Márcio Rafinha and Nikol?e Noveski

Italy: Luca Toni, Marek Hamšík, Andrea Pirlo, Abdoulaye Konko and Mehdi Benatia

Our analysis also highlighted the outstanding performances of young talents such as Jonny Castro (Betis Sevilla) and Samuel Umtiti (Olympique Lyonnais). More data are available on our website.

Our metrics measure players’ pitch production and efficiency in six complementary areas of the game.

CIES Football Observatory key performance indicators

Shooting: ability to take advantage of goal opportunities through accurate shooting

Chance creation: ability to create goal opportunities through efficient passing

Take on: ability to create dangerous situations by successfully challenging opponents

Distribution: ability to hold the grip on the game through efficient passing

Recovery: ability to minimise goal opportunities for opponents through proficient ball recovery

Rigour: ability to minimise goal opportunities for opponents by efficiently blocking their actions

Data in each area are weighted according to the impact on club results per position. Consequently, for example, rigour is more important for centre backs than forwards, while the opposite holds true for shooting.

We also kindly remind you that the 2014 edition of our Demographic Study is now available.

At league level the Italian clubs recruit the oldest players (25,5) and the German clubs the youngest (23,2). All in all, four clubs have fielded players, who arrived on average after the age of 27 : Levante (27,6), Elche (27,2), Bastia and West Ham (27,0). In contrast, Real Sociedad (21,5), FC Barcelona (21,6) and Liverpool (21,9) have used players who have been recruited before the age of 22.
The data for each big-5 league club is presented in the 64th Big-5 Weekly Post which is now available here. We stay at your disposal for more information at football.observatory@cies.ch.

Fulham (Burn, Tunnicliffe, Cole and Tankovi?) and Crystal Palace (Ledley, McCarthy, Ince and Murray) top the table of the clubs having fielded the most players without previous big-5 league experience. The youngest rookie so far was Nahuel Leiva (Villarreal), 17 years, while the oldest was Nagore Gómez (Levante), 33 years.

The full list of rookies is to be found in the 62nd edition of the Big-5 Weekly Post. We stay at your disposal for more information at football.observatory@cies.ch.

Our analysis shows that the best performing players per position in England were Luis Suárez (forward), David Silva (offensive midfielder), Jack Cork (central/defensive midfielder), Laurent Koscielny (centre back) and Aleksandar Kolarov (full back). More information is available in the 61st issue of the Big-5 Weekly Post.

Our metrics measure players’ pitch production and efficiency in six complementary areas of the game (see explanation below). Data in each area are weighted according to the impact on club results per position. Consequently, for example, rigour is more important for centre backs than forwards, while the opposite holds true for shooting.

Moreover, all the indicators are comparable at international level as they were developed by taking into account the differences between leagues in both the style of play and game intensity. Our methodology is thus increasingly used by top-flight professional clubs to assess the strength of squad members or potential signings.

We also kindly remind you that the 2014 edition of our Demographic Study is now available. The CIES Football Observatory will also attend the first OptaPro Analytics Forum to be held Thursday. Drs Roger Besson and Raffaele Poli will present a poster on the fight against relegation in the English Premier League.

CIES Football Observatory key performance indicators

Shooting: ability to take advantage of goal opportunities through accurate shooting

Chance creation: ability to create goal opportunities through efficient passing

Take on: ability to create dangerous situations by successfully challenging opponents

Distribution: ability to hold the grip on the game through efficient passing

Recovery: ability to minimise goal opportunities for opponents through proficient ball recovery

Rigour: ability to minimise goal opportunities for opponents by efficiently blocking their actions

At club level, Real Madrid has invested the most to make up its current squad (536 million euro), followed by Manchester City (435) and Manchester United (395). In the remaining leagues, at the top of the tables are Paris St-Germain (366), Bayern Munich (233) and Juventus (214). Ten clubs spent less than 10 million euro to sign their current squad members. The lowest transfer expenditure in England was recorded for Crystal Palace (24 million euro).

For more information on the CIES Football Observatory, please contact us at football.observatory@cies.ch. We also kindly remind you that a free excerpt of the freshly published Demographic Study 2014 is available on our website.

Bayern Munich, Atalanta and Arsenal head the rankings in the remaining leagues. This analysis coincides with the publication of the 6th edition of the CIES Football Observatory Demographic Study. An excerpt is available here.

For more information please contact us at football.observatory@cies.ch

The Study shows that professional European football is still confronted with processes that do not necessarily augur well for its future. The cloud of economic stakes that hangs over sporting logics is flagrant in many clubs and countries. In general, the number of transfers carried out by teams during the current season is at an all-time high. A trend that is difficult to understand given the actual climate with its numerous financial difficulties.

The increasing speculation surrounding players’ transfers is also visible through the progressive drop in the number of club-trained players, which has attained its lowest level since 2009. Conversely, the percentage of expatriate players has risen for the second consecutive year. Here too, the figure has never been so high.

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For more information and to ask for educational discount, please write to football.observatory@cies.ch.

Key figures

• Despite the regulations introduced in many countries and at UEFA club competition level, the relative presence of footballers playing for the club where they were trained reached a new record low: 21.2%.
• The percentage of expatriate players reached a new record high this season: 36.8%. The proportion of footballers who have already experienced international migration during their career was also never as high as for current season: 49.3%.
• The English Premier League has the second highest percentage of expatriate footballers (60.4%), just after Cyprus. Expatriates represent a majority of squads also in Italy, Turkey, Portugal and Belgium. The greatest proportion was measured at Inter Milan (89%).
• While Brazil remains the most represented foreign origin, the number of Brazilians decreased by 67 since 2009: from 538 to 471. France is the second nation with the highest number of expatriates in top division European leagues: from 247 to 306 (+59) during the last five seasons.
• A new record high was also registered with regard to the number of new signings. On average, players recruited from January 2013 onwards represent 41.3% of squads (10.2 signings per club).
• Transfer activity is much higher in Southern and Eastern Europe than in the northern part of the continent. Cyprus tops the ranking of the highest number of squad members signed after January 2013 (on average 14.1 per club). This figure is only 5.3 in Sweden.
• Italy and England top the table for the largest squads (26.8 players per club on average). Italian Serie A also gathers the most seasoned footballers (27.3 years) and the least percentage of club-trained players (8.4%).
• The tallest league is German Bundesliga (183.8cm), while the shortest is Spanish Liga (180.1cm). Barcelona has the second shortest squad (177.4cm) among the 472 clubs surveyed. Only Bnei Sakhnin (Israel) is composed of shorter players than the Catalan side.
• The highest percentage of players with national A-team caps in 2013 was recorded in England (44.3%). At club level, the greatest proportion of active internationals was registered at Chelsea (80%). The London club outranks Manchester City and Fenerbahçe.
• Barcelona has the most stable squad among European top division teams. Players in the Catalan club have been on average for 5.5 years in the first team squad. The average stay is above 5 years in only one other club: Manchester United.
• Finally, the CIES Football Observatory study confirms the excellent work undertaken by Ajax Amsterdam in the area of youth training. The Dutch side tops the table of clubs having trained the most players under contract with top division teams in Europe. With 69 representatives, Ajax outranks Partizan Belgrade, Barcelona, Hajduk Split and Sporting Lisbon.

While the percentage of minutes played by the 11 most fielded footballers of clubs currently on the podium in their respective league is 77.6%, this figure is only 71.9% for clubs in the relegation zone. Our analysis thus suggests that bad results encourage coaches to change more frequently their line-ups. Rather than improving results, this strategy tends often to aggravate the situation.

At club level, the lowest player turnover levels were measured at Borussia Mönchengladbach (88.6% minutes played by the 11 most fielded players), Atlético Madrid (86.1%) and Lille (84.3%). At the opposite end of the table are Catania (61.6%), Valencia (64.0%) and Real Betis (64.5%).

Next Tuesday, the 59th issue of the Big-5 Weekly Post will present exclusive data from the 2014 edition of the CIES Football Observatory Demographic Study.

For more information please contact us at football.observatory@cies.ch