Issue number 428 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presents the 100 players born in 2002 or later who are not yet playing for a big-5 league club, but whose level of experience accumulated over the past year puts them in the best position to successfully take their careers to the next level.

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Editors:
Raffaele Poli
Roger Besson
Loïc Ravenel
Thomas Gonzalez

Born in 2003, "air-ground blocker" António Silva (SL Benfica) is the player best equipped to join a top club. His transfer value is estimated at €102.5 million by the CIES Football Observatory statistical model. The Portuguese is ahead of two players born in 2002, "ground-air blocker" Pablo Maia (São Paulo FC, €17.4m) and "shooter-creator" Georgiy Sudakov (Shakhtar Donetsk, €35.6m).

Barcelona's new recruit Vitor Roque (Athletico Paranaense, €53.5m) is in fourth place, an impressive ranking for a player born in 2005. Arthur Vermeeren (Anverse, €10.2m) and Jorne Spileers (Bruges, €7.2m) are the only other footballers born in 2005 in the top 100, compared with ten born in 2004, the highest-ranked of whom is the Moroccan full international Bilal El Khannouss (KRC Genk, 14th, €20.6m).

Exclusively developed by the CIES Football Observatory research team, the 100-based experience capital metric is particularly useful for scouts, as it enables them to rank players by considering both their playing time and the sporting level of matches played. This makes it easy to identify the talents whose recruitment offers the best guarantees of success.

A paying platform with numerous statistical indicators has been developed to help professionals optimise their strategies. More information is available on request.