May 6 – With the transfer window about to re-open the big clubs in Europe’s Big-5 leagues will be looking for value buys. But buying outside the Big 5 leagues doesn’t necessarily mean buying cheap.
One of the hottest properties currently is Benfica’s Uruguayan striker Darwin Núñez who is rumoured to be in €80 million+ talks with English premier League clubs.
Núñez (valued at €71 million) heads a list of highest value players from 10 non-big-5 league top divisions worldwide. The ranking was compiled by the CIES Football Observatory who looked at leagues in: Portugal, the Netherlands, Brazil, Belgium, the United States/Canada, Austria, Turkey, Denmark, Switzerland and Scotland.
“Darwin Núñez meets all the most important criteria for a very high valuation: young age (not yet 23 years old), long contract (more than three years remaining), playing for a competitive team (SL Benfica) and performing very well, notably from a goal-scoring perspective,” say the CIES authors.
The following players have the top estimated values in the nine remaining leagues surveyed: Antony dos Santos (NED, €57 million), Charles De Ketelaere (BEL, €40 million), Gabriel Barbosa (BRA, €39 million), Karim Adeyemi (AUT, €31 million), Muhammed Aktürkoğlu (TUR, €20 million), Alan Velasco (USA, €20 million), Liel Abada (SCO, €19 million), Anders Dreyer (DEN, €15 million), as well as Dan Ndoye (SUI, €15 million).
To see the full ranking click here. https://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2021/wp379/en/
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