November 22 – Tottenham Hotspur are the highest ranked English team by youthfulness in domestic league football in Europe’s five leagues. The ranking is created by taking the average age of match-day line ups with Spurs coming in with an average age of 25.6.
But it is the German and French leagues where youth is given the most opportunity with the top 11 positions in the ranking going to five French and six German clubs. Half the clubs in the top 20 are from the Bundesliga.
New Bundesliga leaders RB Leipzig are fourth in the table, But the top two positions are filled by France’s Toulouse (average age 23.44) and Nice, who are currently second in Ligue 1.
There are only one Italian (Milan) and one Spanish (Granada) team in the top 20. Liverpool are the second Premier League team in the top 20, ranked 18th with an average age of 26.09.
The data, complied by the CIES Football Observatory, also looks at the average of players in 31 other top division leagues in Europe where they find a much greater skew towards youth.
Top of the ranking is Danish side Nordsjælland with an average age of 22.1 years.
CIES comments: “Based in Farum, 20 km from Copenhagen, Nordsjælland was recently bought by a group of investors also involved in the running of a football academy in Ghana, Right to Dream. They are currently ranked 8th in the Danish Superliga.”
CIES plans to update these rankings every six months.
To view the full Top 100 rankings go to http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/rk/young/en/
Top 20 ranking by ‘youthfulness’
Source: CIES Football Observatory
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