May 27 – The CIES Football Observatory has produced a ranking of Best XI player for each of 32 European leagues analysed over the 2021/22 season.
The Best XIs show an overwhelming dominance of players from the table topping teams in the big five leagues with nine Bayern Munich players making up the Bundlesliga selection. Jude Bellingham and Manuel Riemann break a Bayern clean sweep.
In the Premier League Liverpool and Man City provide 10 of the 11 best players with Spurs and England captain Harry Kane taking the 11th slot. In Spain Real Madrid dominate with six players in LaLiga’s bext XI.
The data is compiled using CIES’s Impact Score approach combining team results with player employment and technical performance as per InStat data. Tactical formations were chosen by first including top-ranked players in the most frequent position played and then adding footballers for complementary positions.
“Players from 21 clubs were selected in the Best XIs for the big-5: Liverpool (6), Manchester City (4) and Tottenham (Harry Kane) in England; Real Madrid (6), Sevilla (2), Barcelona (2) and Betis (Nabil Fekir) in Spain; Milan (4), Inter (3), Juventus (2), Napoli (Amir Rrahmani) and Fiorentina (Nicolás González) in Italy; Bayern Munich (9), Borussia Dortmund (Jude Bellingham) and Bochum (Manuel Riemann) in Germany; Paris St-Germain (5), Marseille (2), Rennes (Benjamin Bourigeaud), Monaco (Aurélien Tchouaméni), Strasbourg (Ludovic Ajorque) and Nice (Walter Benítez) in France,” says the CIES report.
The ten youngest players in the Best XIs are Jude Bellingham (Borussia Dortmund), Arsen Zakharyan (Dinamo Moskow), Ilya Zabarnyi (Dynamo Kiev), Adam Hlozek (Sparta Prague), Nuno Mendes (PSG), Jakub Kaminski (Lech Poznan), Ryan Gravenberch (Ajax), Karim Adeyemi (RB Salzburg), Liel Abada (Celtic) and Jurriën Timber (Ajax).
To see the full league Best XI rankings click here.
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