Ranking footballers according to their style of play

The 72nd Monthly Report presents the method developed by the CIES Football Observatory to rank footballers according to their style of play.

From the data gathered by InStat, the study notably calculates statistical distances between players, a particularly useful approach from a scouting perspective.

The sample is composed of 7,215 footballers from clubs in 36 top and second division leagues across Europe.

The analysis reveals that, for example, James Maddison is the big-5 league footballer closest to Kylian Mbappé from the perspective of the technical actions performed.

This exercise can be carried out for any player.

Always at big-5 league level, Dusan Vlahovic is the footballer who is closest to Erling Haaland, Paulo Dybala to Lionel Messi, Romain Faivre to Neymar Junior, Dominik Szoboszlai to Kevin de Bruyne, Remo Freuler to Jorginho Frello or Jonathan Tah to Virgil van Dijk.

The study also puts forward footballers whose performances deviate most positively from those of teammates for each of the eight player profile classes built from a principal component analysis.

The three youngest players in the top 10 of a class are Yvan Dibango (FC Isloch, 6th in the “Trippier” class), El Bilal Touré (Stade de Reims, 8th in the “Lukaku” class) and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (Rubin Kazan, 9th in the “Sterling” class”).

Clubs and agents interested in knowing more about the work of our research group, notably the freshly developed Toolkit, are kindly invited to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

About the CIES Football Observatory

The CIES Football Observatory is a research group created in 2005 within the Swiss-based Centre International d’Étude du Sport (CIES). It specialises in the statistical analysis of football, in particular in the areas of demographics, transfer values and performance. Click here for more information.

About the CIES

The International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) is an independent study centre located in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. It was created in 1995 as a joint venture between the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the University of Neuchâtel, the City and State of Neuchatel. Click here for more information. Click here for more information.

CIES – Centre International d’Étude du Sport

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