Lamine Yamal: the most valuable under-21 in the world, and what the top 100 tells us
A new list of the estimated transfer fees that the world's best young footballers can attract has Barcelona's 17-year-old at No1, but Brighton have most players in the list
It was entirely coincidental that as I published Wednesday’s piece about the renaissance of Barcelona being underpinned by La Masia graduates, that the CIES Football Observatory in Switzerland published a new list of the most valuable male footballers in the world aged under 21.
Three of Barca’s players are in the top 100 including the player rated as most valuable.
I’ve written about the Observatory often over the past 14 years and particularly rate their model that predicts what players will sell for at any given point in time.
If you are interested in the methodology and accuracy of the model then there is a peer reviewed paper (below) that explains the high degree of correlation between the estimated values and prices then paid in the real world.
You can see the full list of the world’s most valuable under-21s at the CIES website here. And No1 in that list is Barca’s 17-year-old winger Lamine Yamal, worth an estimated €180.9m.
Here’s the top 10, and if you want to see the whole top 100, go to the link in the previous paragraph.
Four players are rated at more than €100m with Manchester United’s Alejandro Garnacho worth €114.8m, Warren Zaire-Emery of PSG worth €109m and Savio of Manchester City worth €101m.
The list tells us a number of things about the current global game and the changing nature of how different positions are valued.
Some of the major takeouts:
Players from 17 different leagues appear in the top, with the Premier League contributing the most players (26), followed by Ligue 1 of France (17) and La Liga (12).
There are also players from leagues in Italy, Germany, Portugal, Austria, Turkey, Ecuador, Brazil, Russia, the Netherlands, Argentina, Denmark, Belgium among others.
The club with the most players in the top 100 is Brighton of the Premier League, with these six players.
Whereas strikers, for decades, were usually the most valuable players in terms of fees received, and wages paid, followed by midfielders, defenders and goalkeepers, in that order, other key positions have grown hugely in value.
The top 10 players include three defensive midfielders, four wingers, and one centre-forward, one full-back and one attacking midfielder.
This piece is one of numerous articles on this site that is free to read for everyone. But the work of the Sportingintelligence Substack, not least investigative pieces on the smoke & mirrors of Man City’s legal battles, the true scale of match-fixing in England, the ‘Skyfall’ series on drugs in British cycling, part 1 of 5 here, match-fixing in tennis, and much else, is unsustainable without paid subscriber support. It’s $7 a month, or £5.39, which is less than the price of a pint. Try it and read everything. And if you’re not getting value for money, unsubscribe. Thanks!