The CIES Football Observatory is pleased to inform you that a new edition of the Big-5 Weekly Post is available to download for free on our website. The latest issue considers the subject of club-trained players (footballers having played during at least three seasons between the ages of 15 and 21 for their current club).

Leagues with the most / least club-trained players (percentage of minutes played by club-trained players during last week-end)

Spanish Liga 24.5% / Italian Serie A 6.4%

Clubs with the most club-trained players (last week-end)

Athletic Bilbao (ESP) 65.9%, Real Sociedad (ESP) 64.6%

We are also pleased to present you the most productive players for each of the big-5 European leagues in last week-end matches.

Most productive players, general index (last week-end)

ENG: M. Fellaini (Everton) / ESP: V. Rodríguez (Zaragoza) / FRA: S. Diarra (Ajaccio) / GER: H. Kiyotake (Nürnberg) / ITA: F. Quagliarella (Juventus)

The most productive players per area of the game also available on our website. Enjoy the read!

The CIES Football Observatory is pleased to inform you that a new edition of the Big-5 Weekly Post is available to download for free on our website. The latest issue considers the subject of full internationals (percentage of footballers who played at least one national A-team match during their career).

Leagues with the most / least full internationals (percentage of minutes played by full internationals during last week-end)

English Premier League 74.1% / French Ligue 1 42.2%

Clubs with the most / least full internationals (last week-end)

Internazionale FC & Juventus FC (ITA) 100% / CA Osasuna (ESP) 1.8%

We are also pleased to present you the most productive players for each of the big-5 European leagues in last week-end matches.

Most productive players, general index (last week-end)

ENG: L. Suárez (Liverpool) / ESP: D. Villa (Barcelona) / FRA: F. Kadir (Valenciennes) / GER: T. Kroos (Bayern) / ITA: A. Gómez (Catania)

The most productive players per area of the game also available on our website. Enjoy the read!

Dear Subscriber, the CIES Football Observatory is pleased to inform you that the latest issue of the Big-5 Weekly Post is now available to download for free on our website. This issue presents the most productive players in the big-5 leagues during October.

Thanks to the data provided by Opta Pro, our analysis concerns five key areas of the game: shooting, chance creation, take on, distribution, and recovery. The general index is the weighted sum of all these specific indicators. In October, the most productive players overall were:

• Juan Mata (Chelsea FC) in England
• Cesc Fàbregas (FC Barcelona) in Spain
• Alain Traoré (FC Lorient) in France
• Franck Ribéry (Bayern Munich) in Germany
• Eric Lamela (AS Roma) in Italy

Some players from middle or bottom ranked clubs also performed particularly well in specific areas of the game. For example, Wes Hoolahan (Norwich City) was the most productive player in take on for England and Papakouli Diop (Levante) is at the top of the table in recovery in Spain.

The CIES Football Observatory academic team is at your disposal for more information.

Kind regards

Raffaele Poli, head of CIES Football Observatory

A brand new model has been developed which includes four main criteria for league success: international activity of players, their league experience, squad stability and the quality of signings. This latter factor was not included in models used for the two previous seasons.

The combination of all these elements suggests that the following clubs have the best chances of finishing in the top three positions of the rankings. Clubs in bold have the highest probability of winning their respective league.

England:
Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal

Spain:
Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid

Germany:
Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Schalke 04

Italy:
Juventus, Milan, Napoli

France:
Paris St-Germain, Lille, Olympique de Marseille

Our predictions also distinguish between clubs expected to finish in the top half of the league and teams expected to finish in the bottom part of the table. For both groups, we have identified a club per league with a high probability of performing better than expected, such as whether to finish in the top three (Chelsea, Valencia, Stuttgart, Inter Milan, and Olympique Lyonnais) or in the top half (West Bromwich, Getafe, Hamburger SV, Parma, and Lorient).

The complete predictions are available to download for free on the CIES Football Observatory website.

Week by week throughout the season, you will find on our website the updated comparison between the rank expected and actually achieved by all clubs as well as the average rank gap for each league. The best results last season were recorded in Italy and Germany (on average 3.2 ranks of difference between predictions and reality), while the worst was registered in Spain (4.3). The goal for this year is to have an average gap lower than 4 in all the leagues.

We kindly invite you to send us your questions, remarks or suggestions at football.observatory@cies.ch. We wish you an enjoyable season and, of course, may your favourite team perform better than we have forecasted!

Our first paper is already accessible by clicking here. It deals with the issue of player turnover at big-five league level, by comparing strategies followed by clubs according to their results for last season. This allows us to highlight best practices in this area.

More in-depth findings on this subject and further analysis on the key success factors both from a squad make up and pitch performance perspective will be published mid-August in the seventh edition of the CIES Football Observatory Annual Review.

The specific section on player pitch performance is already available by pre-ordering the full study. For more information, please refer to our website or write to football.observatory@cies.ch.

The “Player pitch Performance” chapter allows interested parties to access essential information prior to the opening of the summer transfer window. It notably includes rankings which highlight the best performing footballers when compared to their team-mates. This data is particularly useful in identifying relatively unknown players as potential future signings.

The CIES Football Observatory Annual Review is a 96-page must-have publication for understanding the logics of success in the five major European leagues. Using a novel “demo-technic” approach, the CIES Football Observatory academic team carefully combine the study of players’ demographic profile with their on-pitch performances both at an individual and collective level.

The six chapters that make up this key reference publication cover the following areas: player selection and turnover; age structure and club experience; mobility and contracts; club pitch performance and player pitch performance. An excerpt of the last year report may be downloaded for free from our website.

To order or for further information, please contact us at: football.observatory@cies.ch