May 25 – With Europe’s five big league season complete the CIES Football Observatory have released Best XIs for each of them. The selections show players from the winning clubs in all leagues dominating, but not all football’s biggest names.
Qualification for selection meant players had to be on the pitch for at least thirds of domestic league minutes played. The criteria used for selection was the CIES performance index that has been developed using OptaPro data. Line-ups were selected in a 4-2-1-3.
The Premier League’s attacking formation could well be England’s starting line up for the Euros with Harry Kane (Spurs) leading the line alongside Raheem Sterling (Man City) and Mason Mount (Chelsea).
Five Manchester City players made the Premier League line-up, three of them defenders – Ederson Moraes, Rubén Dias and João Cancelo. The dominance of players from one club was even more pronounced in Italy with six Inter Milan players making the tip XI including Romelu Lukaku leading the line. , plus Victor Lindelöf and Andrew Robertson, with Rodri Hernández and Granit Xhaka as holding midfielders.
“Some outstanding but not yet very known players are included in the line-ups for the remaining leagues,” say the CIES report authors. “We notably find Ridle Baku (Wolfsburg) as right full-back in the German Bundesliga’s best 11, Aurélien Tchouaméni (Monaco), Farid Boulaya (Metz) and Romain Faivre (Stade Brestois) in the French Ligue 1 selection, Domenico Berardi (Sassuolo) in Italy and Javi Galan (Huesca) in Spain.”
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