March 28 – Manchester City players dominate a Best XI of Premier League players over the past 1,000 minutes of league football played, but they would need Man Utd’s Marcu Rashform up front to complete their line-up.
The analysis measuring the technical performance of players has been compiled by the CIES Football Observatory using OptaPro data and shows clearly how Man City have been eating into Liverpool’s early season Premier League lead in the past two months.
The analysis looks at the last 1,000 minutes played across Europe’s Big-5 leagues, only ranking players fielded for at least 630 minutes since January 1.
Not surprisingly in France’s Ligue 1, PSG players dominate with six players in the Best XI, while Barcelona have five players in LaLiga (including the every-present Messi) and Bayern have four players in the Bundesliga’s Best XI.
In Italy four Atalanta players make the Best XI – Timothy Castagne, Josep Ilicic, Papu Gomez and Duvan Zapata – while only Daniele Rugani makes it from Juventus despite Cristiano Ronaldo’s goalscoring form.
The youngest footballers per league are Gianluigi Donnarumma (Italy), Sergio Reguilon (France), Jadon Sancho (Germany), Marcus Rashford (England) and Kylian Mbappe (France).
See the full stats at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2018/256/en/
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