Issue 407 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presents the players who have performed best in the area of take on over the past year on the basis of an exclusive index based on 100 taking into account the frequency of successful dribbles and crosses, playing time, as well as the sporting level of matches played. Ousmane Dembélé tops the list among attacking players and João Cancelo among defending ones.

Vinícius Júnior and Kevin De Bruyne round up the podium for offensive players. Seventh overall, Kylian Mbappé is the highest-ranked footballer among those who played primarily in the centre of the attack. Three players who have not yet turned 20 appear in the top 100: Jude Bellingham, Ângelo Gabriel (Santos FC) and Jamal Musiala. The evergreen Croatian Luka Modrić is the oldest player on the list, ahead of Salernitana’s Antonio Candreva.

Among defensive players, João Cancelo outranks Trent Alexander-Arnold and Javi Galan (Celta Vigo). Four players aged 23 or under are in the top ten: Pedro Porro (fourth), Reece James (eighth), Nuno Tavares (ninth) and Alphonso Davies (tenth). The French Malo Gusto and Quentin Merlin are the youngest footballers in the top 100, while Jesús Navas and the fresh América Mineiro recruit Nino Paraíba are the oldest.

For more information on the different areas of play considered by the CIES Football Observatory for the analysis of players’ technical performance (InStat/Hudl data), please refer to this Monthly Report.

>>> Tops 100

Issue 406 of the CIES Football Observatory’s Weekly Post presents the 50 clubs that spent the most on the player market during the current and last summer’s transfer windows. Chelsea crushes the competition with €555 million invested (including add-ons) to acquire 15 footballers. This is more than double the amount spent by the second biggest spender: Manchester United (€272 million for 7 players).

West Ham United, Nottingham Forest and Wolverhampton Wanderers complete an all-English top five. All twenty Premier League teams but Leicester City (51st), feature in the top 50, reflecting the increasingly obvious economic dominance of the English top flight. Barcelona is ahead of Paris St-Germain among non-Premier League teams, AFC Ajax tops the table for clubs outside of the big-5, while Flamengo is the only non-European team in the top 50.

Per league, the English top division is far above any other championship with a staggering €3.19 billion total fee expenditure (add-ons included). This is almost four times more than the amount invested by the teams in the second biggest spending league: the Italian Serie A (€826 m). The French Ligue 1 (€726 m) completes the podium ahead of the Spanish Liga (€708 m) and the German Bundesliga (€689 m). The sixth ranked competition, the Dutch Eredivisie, is at a much lower level (€228 m).

>>> Top 50

The 405th edition of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post ranks 417 teams from 27 European top divisions according to the percentage of minutes played by club-trained footballers, i.e. present for at least three years between the seasons of their 15th and 21st birthdays. The highest proportions were measured for the Slovakians of MŠK Žilina in total (73.3% of minutes by 16 players trained) and Athletic Club in the big-5 (56.6%; 13).

Club-trained footballers played a majority of minutes for only one other team in the five major leagues: Olympique Lyonnais (52.2%; 11 "trained"). Real Sociedad rounds out the podium for the big-5 (40.2%). Chelsea and Brighton & Hove top the list in the English Premier League (26.9%), SC Freiburg in the German Bundesliga (31.0%), AS Roma in Italian Serie A (17.8%), as well as SL Benfica in the Portuguese Primeira Liga (25.8%).

Thirty-three teams are at the bottom of the ranking with no player trained fielded in current season’s domestic league matches. Among them are 11 big-5 league clubs: one from Ligue 1 (Olympique de Marseille), one from the Premier League (Brentford FC), one from the Bundesliga (Union Berlin), three from the Liga (Cádiz, Getafe and Almería), and five from Serie A (Bologna, Lecce, Udinese, Cremonese and Salernitana). The data by league is available in the Demographic Atlas.

>>> Go to the Post

>>> Go to the Atlas

Issue number 404 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presents sixty players whose contracts end next June with the highest Impact Score in their age group. The French Evan N’Dicka (Eintracht Frankfurt) tops the list among footballers who have not yet turned 23, the Spaniard Marco Asensio (Real Madrid) for those aged between 24 and 26, as well as Adrien Rabiot (Juventus) for players between 27 and 30 years of age.

While these players can be signed without the payment of a transfer fee in six months’ time, they already represent excellent opportunities for clubs wanting to get ahead of the competition. The highest transfer value among the footballers listed was recorded for Youri Tielemans (Leceister City, €30.8m), ahead of Milan Skriniar (Inter, €30.3m), Marco Asensio (Real Madrid, €21.9m), Youssoufa Moukoko (Borussia Dortmund, €20.3m) and Adrien Rabiot (Juventus, €19.5m).

The Impact Score is a metric that is perfectly comparable between all footballers regardless of their technical characteristics, taking into account the sporting level of matches played during the last year, minutes played in official games, as well as playing performances (InStat data). This tool available for free presents the Impact Score value for players in more than 70 leagues worldwide. Under contract only until June 2023 too, Luka Modric is among the six players scoring the highest (100).

Go to the Weekly Post

Go to the Impact Score tool

Jude Bellingham heads the list of the 100 players worldwide with the top estimated transfer value according to the statistical model exclusively developed by the CIES Football Observatory research team. His owner club, Borussia Dortmund, could potentially earn up to €208m by transferring the 19-year-old English prodigy. With Bellingham’s contract running out in June 2025, this is probably the transfer window during which the Germans could make the biggest profit.

>>> GO TO THE TOP 100 LIST

Despite relatively short contracts lasting until June 2024, Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior are in the top four (both €191m), just ahead of the English Premier League top scorer Erling Haaland (€175m). With a contract running until 2027, the latter’s value is set to rise in the coming months to approach or even surpass that of the players ranked ahead of him, including that of his Manchester City’s teammate Phil Foden (€200m), currently second.

The greatest estimated value for players outside of the big-5 was measured for Benfica’s recent World Cup winner Enzo Fernández (€80m). The estimates for all footballers in the five major European championships are available in free access here. A paper presenting the method used is also available in the peer-review and open access journal Economies. An online platform with the valuations of >30k players from 75 leagues worldwide is accessible by subscription. Do not hesitate to contact us for more information.

With a new transfer window about to open, the 81st edition of the CIES Football Observatory Monthly Report presents its exclusive approach to player scouting, bringing together in a coherent framework different and complementary information such as the footballers’ playing time, level of competition, positions, technical areas of activity, age, contract length and transfer value.

The Report identifies the 200 players - the top 10 in twenty classification categories - born in 2002 or later who have accumulated the most playing experience in the last year. The categories were determined by the players’ primary position and activity level (InStat data) in eight areas of play: three defensive (air defence, ground defence, recovery), four offensive (take on, chance creation, shooting, air attack), as well as distribution.

For each player identified, the report also presents the contractual duration with the owning club and the estimated transfer value based on the CIES Football Observatory statistical model, which has become a reference. An online platform with a wide range of player statistics from 75 leagues around the world is now also available by subscription. Do not hesitate to contact us for more information.

>>> See the Report (pdf) (online)

The following players top the list for the twenty classification categories, with club of employment and estimated transfer value:

• Goalkeeper: Maarten Vandevoordt (KRC Genk) €18.1 million
• Defensive centre back: Castello Lukeba (Olympique Lyonnais) €37.0m
• Ball-playing centre back: Josko Gvardiol (RB Leipzig) €122.4m
• Defensive left back: John Tolkin (New York RB) €5.1m
• Defensive right back: Killian Sildillia (SC Freiburg) €5.4m
• Two-way left back: Nuno Mendes (Paris St-Germain) €66.0m
• Two-way right back: Amar Dedic (RB Salzburg) €6.6m
• Attacking left back: Quentin Merlin (FC Nantes) €19.1m
• Attacking right back: Malo Gusto (Olympique Lyonnais) €17.0m
• Defensive midfielder: Pablo Maia (São Paulo FC) €10.3m
• Defensive playmaker: Pedri González (FC Barcelona) €169.8m
• Two-way midfielder: Nicola Zalewski (AS Roma) €18.7m
• Attacking playmaker: Kenneth Taylor (AFC Ajax) €32.6m
• Attacking midfielder: Jude Bellingham (Borussia Dortmund) €211.3m
• Shot-oriented left winger: Facundo Kruspzky (free) €0.0 m
• Shot-oriented right winger: Andrés Gómez (Millonarios FC) €8.1m
• Allrounder left winger: Adam Hlozek (Bayer Leverkusen) €29.8m
• Allrounder right winger: Angsar Knauff (Eintracht Frankfurt) €15.9m
• Shot-oriented centre forward: Marcos Leonardo (Santos FC) €29.2m
• Allrounder centre forward: Rômulo Cardoso (CA Parananense) €4.4m