February 2 – “You don’t win anything with kids,” is a famous comment by former Scotland and Liverpool player Alan Hansen. But Premier League clubs aren’t even trying to according to data examining the number of debutants in the professional game in the current season in Europe’s Big 5 leagues.
Premier League clubs have have debuted just 12 players so far this season, with those players having played a combined 907 minutes. Needless to say the league is bottom of the Big 5 ranking in terms of opportunity for young players, with Serie A above them having debuted only three players more but having given those players significantly more time on the pitch with 2,181 minutes between them.
The report by the CIES Fooball Observatory shows the French Ligue 1 easily topping the ranking of both the number of debutants (29) and total domestic league minutes played (11,129). One player stands out in those figures – centre back Malang Sarr has played 1,964 minutes for Nice. Nice are currently joint top on points of Ligue 1 in France – Hansen might be wrong.
In terms of players the English debutant with the most minutes is Spurs’ Harry Winks (pictured) with 357. He comes in 19th on the ranking list.
The top players in the other European markets are Aarón Martín (Espanyol) in Spain (1,147 minutes), Pol Lirola (Sassuolo) in Italy (1,022 minutes), and Ousman Manneh (Werder) in Germany (488 minutes).
CIES finds that “at club level, the record figures were observed at Montpellier, Metz, Toulouse and Espanyol for the number of debutants (4), as well as at Nice for minutes played (2,245).”
Source: CIES Football Observatory
See the full ranking at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2016/174/en/
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