October 29 – Ajax tops a European ranking of clubs who have developed the most players in 31 top divisions of UEFA member countries.
The Dutch team has trained 81 players currently active in these championships, six more than Shakhtar Donetsk.
Looking at the Big 5 leagues, Real Madrid and Barcelona jointly head the table for players active in the five major European leagues (42). They are followed by four French teams and the Premier League’s Arsenal (equal sixth) with 25 players.
The data from the CIES Football Observatory also includes a Training Index, an indicator weighting the number of players trained according to the sporting level of their employer clubs (through a coefficient based on domestic league and international club competitions results), their employment rate (over the last year), as well as their age (the younger, the better).
“Ajax again tops this table for players in the 31 European top divisions surveyed, ahead of Sporting Clube de Portugal and Real Madrid,” found the CIES data authors.
“The highest Training Index when only considering big-5 league footballers was recorded for Real Madrid, ahead of FC Barcelona and Paris St-Germain. Ajax, Sporting Clube and Anderlecht are the best-ranked non big-5 league teams. As per UEFA definition, training clubs are those where footballers have played for at least three years between the ages of 15 and 21. The season during which players celebrated their 15th and 21st birthday are also included.”
To see the full data click here.
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