Since 2005, the Football Observatory research group within the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) has developed pioneering data analysis to understand the logics of success in football. This report unveils the key findings related to the four main dimensions of sustainable squad management: team chemistry, demographic structure, performance analysis and transfer policy.

Professional clubs, football academies and leagues regularly take advantage of the exclusive expertise gathered within the CIES Football Observatory to increase their competitiveness. The innovative research work carried out also has an educational vocation by helping football stakeholders, including media and fans, to develop original thinking on the beautiful game.

Furthermore, the CIES Football Observatory academic team is pleased to disclose its player performance rankings for the five major European championships. The top 15 list per position and league will be updated on a weekly basis throughout the season. To know more about the methodology used, see Monthly Report number 5.

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

During last season, the percentage of minutes played by club-trained footballers reached a new record low: 14.3%. In the English Premier League, players who spent at least three years between the ages of 15 and 21 in their employer club never played a fewer percentage of minutes than in 2014/15: 10.2%. The minimal level of minutes played by club-trained footballers was recorded in Italy: 8.5%.

The percentage of minutes played by expatriates is stable at around 46%. However, the percentage of players who grew up in a different country than that of their employer club reached a new record high among the five best ranked teams per league: 59.6%. This percentage was never as high as in 2014/15 in three leagues out of five: England (77.1%), Spain (57.1%) and Germany (53.1%). It is also very high in the Italian Serie A: 71.4%.

The CIES Football Observatory is also proud to be able to present for the first time the probabilities of fee paying transfers for big-5 league players. This was a major achievement of the research work carried out by our academic team during the last year. Many expensive footballers are to be found in the top-100 of this ranking, such as Raheem Sterling, Alexis Sánchez, Antoine Griezmann, Harry Kane and Philippe Coutinho.

More information is available in issue number 115 of the Big-5 Weekly Post (the last before the summer break). The full data is presented in the sixth edition of the CIES Football Observatory Monthly Report. This publication also explains the unique methodology developed by our research team to estimate both transfer values and transfer probabilities of football players.

The clubs per league having the most relied on U21 players are Monaco (34.6%), Valencia (25.5%), Empoli (23.3%), Bayer Leverkusen (23.1%) and Liverpool (19.8%). Conversely, U21 footballers played less than 2% of minutes in 27 teams out of 98, including at Champions League finalists Barcelona and Juventus.

All the data is available in issue number 113 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post.

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

At the head of the tables per position are Phil Jones (Manchester United) for centre backs, Layvin Kurzawa (Monaco) for full backs, Marco Verratti (Paris St-Germain) for defensive midfielders, Isco Alarcón (Real Madrid) for attacking midfielders and Felipe Anderson (Lazio) for forwards.

In the top-3 positions of the rankings are not only well known players such as Raphaël Varane (Real Madrid), David Alaba (Bayern Munich) or Paul Pogba (Juventus), but also less renowned talents such as José Giménez (Atlético Madrid), Ricardo Rodríguez (Wolfsburg), Granit Xhaka (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Bernardo Silva (Monaco) and Clinton N’Jie (Lyon).

The rankings are based on the CIES Football Observatory exclusive Key performance indicators in the following areas of the game:

• Shooting: ability to take advantage of goal opportunities through accurate shooting.
• Chance creation: ability to put teammates in a favourable position to strike.
• Take on: ability to create dangerous situations by successfully challenging opponents.
• Distribution: ability to keep a hold on the game through efficient passing.
• Recovery: ability to minimise goal opportunities for opponents through proficient interception work.
• Rigour: ability to minimise goal opportunities for opponents through robust duelling.