Issue number 336 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presents the index developed by the sports data company InStat to assess the performance of football players. This metric considers the technical gestures achieved by players, their playing time, as well as the level of the competitions in which matches were played. For footballers with more than 1,000 domestic league minutes this season, Lionel Messi (405) outranks Neymar Júnior (381) and Robert Lewandowski (371).

Manchester City’s full back João Cancelo (368) head the table in the English Premier League ahead of teammates Rodri Hernández, Kevin de Bruyne and Riyad Mahrez. At fifth position is Jesse Lingard (West Ham, on loan from Manchester United). Players from five different teams are at the top five positions of the Serie A rankings: Lorenzo Insigne (Napoli), Achraf Hakimi (Inter), Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus), Théo Hernández (Milan) and Domenico Berardi (Sassuolo).

The youngest players heading the table in their respective league are 21-year-olds Noa Lang (Club Brugge) in Belgium and Fabio Parisi (Empoli) in the Italian Serie B, as well as 22-year-olds Patson Daka (RB Salzburg) in Austria, Olimpiu Moruţan (FCSB) in Romania and Denys Popov (Dynamo Kyiv) in Ukraine. The InStat Index for almost 10,000 players from 32 leagues of UEFA member countries is available in exclusivity and for free here.