CIES Football Observatory Archives - Page 9 of 10 - Inside World Football

Liverpool overpaid for van Dijk but so did Barca for Coutinho. Costa was overpriced too

money and football

February 6 – The three biggest transfers in the winter window - Philippe Coutinho (€160m), Virgil van Dijk (€84m) and Diego Costa (€66m) – were all concluded at a higher value than the real worth of the players, according to analysis by the CIES Football Observatory. Liverpool overpaid by €21 million for van Dijk, but balanced that with Barca’s overpayment of €13 million for Coutinho. Chelsea managed to get an impressive €26 million more than CIES’s estimated real value for Costa.

Performance

Man City, Liverpool and Man Utd set to pass their way into CL quarter finals, say stats

January 31 – Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and for Manchester City it is the route to winning titles. The club top a European table of clubs across 31 leagues ranked by the most accurate passes per domestic league game since the start of the season.

Finance

Slave trading? Brazil with, 1,210, top expat players table; France export 732 – 90 to England

January 19 – With the Winter transfer window open but the market relatively cold in comparison to the last overheated Summer transfer window bonanza, the CIES Football Observatory has produced an analysis of the destinations of the players from the three main exporting countries of Brazil, Argentina and France.

Performance

Barca top club list of leading international players, Man Utd and Spurs follow

December 19 – Barcelona players are more likely to be key players for their countries than those at Manchester United, Spurs, Bayern Munich or Juventus. A survey of minutes played by national A team players in 2017 saw Barca players rack up 139 matches and 10, 846 minutes.

Finance

Mbappé beats Dele Alli to top transfer value spot. Six players at English clubs make top 10

December 6 – French prodigy Kylian Mbappé tops the ranking by transfer value of U21 players in the big-5 European leagues. The PSG striker takes over the lead spot from Spurs’ Dele Alli.

Performance

Rashford, Abraham, Davies, Calvert-Lewin and Gomez fly flag for England’s forgotten youth

November 21 – England may have had double World Cup success at FIFA U17 and U20 levels but the fears that few of these winning players would be given limited first team opportunity in the Premier League has very quickly become a reality.

Finance

Man City and Spurs have most valuable squads in Europe. Neymar and Kane top player values

November 7 – Manchester City and Spurs have the most valuable squads in Europe, according to research by the CIES Football Observatory. Barca come third in the ranking with Chelsea in fourth spot. All of their squads are valued at over €1 billion.

Performance

Celtic are champions of Europe’s possession stats

September 26 – Possession stats have become a staple of the TV presentation package and an indication of how games are progressing – generally winning teams have the majority of possession. Celtic top a ranking of European clubs this season, with a thumping 70.8% of ball possession.

Performance

Big money for old rope? Newcastle lead English teams by youth, but none make top 100 ranking

Youths heading the ball

September 21 – A ranking of top division clubs in 31 European nations according to the average age of line-ups fielded since the start of the current season shows just 15 clubs from the Big 5 leagues in the top 100 and none from the Premier League.

Performance

Messi outranks Ronaldo, four Bayern players make Best XI, Pogba breaks into top tier

Ronaldo and Messi

May 16 – The CIES Football Observatory has ranked the best players of the 2016/17 season using their stats analysis and have come up with a Best XI that includes five players from the Bundesliga wth four of them – Manuel Neuer, Javi Martinez, Mats Hummels and Thiago Alcantara – from Bayern Munich.

Performance

Foreign legions: Brazil head list of countries exporting talent, England come in fifth

iwf swissgames2

May 11 – Brazil is still the country that provides most players to clubs worldwide with 1,202 Brazilians plying their trade outside of Brazil. France has the second highest number of players overseas with 781 (107 of them in England) and Argentina is the third highest with 753.

Performance

Unfair competition: CL and Europe’s Big 5 leagues lead the stats of most 3 goal thrashings

Champions League graphic

April 11 – The issue of competitive balance in European competition was brought into political focus recently with UEFA’s new Champions League qualification criteria which sees four teams from the top four nations automatically qualify for the group stages. Not only does this reduce the opportunity of other teams from smaller leagues to challenge but it will likely concentrate more of the revenue towards the biggest teams.

Performance

Barca and Real top home trained players list but Arsenal have most still at the club

Champions League graphic

February 21 – Of the 16 teams left in the knockout rounds the Champions League, 86 of the 384 players registered (16 squads of 24 players) graduated to the first team via the academy of that club. However, 26 of those players were playing for different clubs than those that trained them.

Performance

Brazil tops player exports, but French head Big 5 imports. England rank 11th

Brazil eye

November 29 – There are more Brazilian players playing outside their home country in Europe’s top 31 leagues than any other nation. Though there are more French players playing outside of France in the Big Five leagues than there are Brazilians.

Performance

Real Madrid and Ajax top rankings of clubs turning out players into first teams

November 1 – There are more players progressing into first team squads in Europe’s top leagues from Real Madrid and Ajax than any other clubs in Europe. Real Madrid have trained 41 players now playing at Big-5 league clubs.