Dear Subscriber, the CIES Football Observatory is pleased to inform you that the latest issue of the Big-5 Weekly Post is now available to download for free on our website. This issue presents the most productive players in the big-5 leagues during October.

Thanks to the data provided by Opta Pro, our analysis concerns five key areas of the game: shooting, chance creation, take on, distribution, and recovery. The general index is the weighted sum of all these specific indicators. In October, the most productive players overall were:

• Juan Mata (Chelsea FC) in England
• Cesc Fàbregas (FC Barcelona) in Spain
• Alain Traoré (FC Lorient) in France
• Franck Ribéry (Bayern Munich) in Germany
• Eric Lamela (AS Roma) in Italy

Some players from middle or bottom ranked clubs also performed particularly well in specific areas of the game. For example, Wes Hoolahan (Norwich City) was the most productive player in take on for England and Papakouli Diop (Levante) is at the top of the table in recovery in Spain.

The CIES Football Observatory academic team is at your disposal for more information.

Kind regards

Raffaele Poli, head of CIES Football Observatory

A brand new model has been developed which includes four main criteria for league success: international activity of players, their league experience, squad stability and the quality of signings. This latter factor was not included in models used for the two previous seasons.

The combination of all these elements suggests that the following clubs have the best chances of finishing in the top three positions of the rankings. Clubs in bold have the highest probability of winning their respective league.

England:
Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal

Spain:
Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid

Germany:
Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Schalke 04

Italy:
Juventus, Milan, Napoli

France:
Paris St-Germain, Lille, Olympique de Marseille

Our predictions also distinguish between clubs expected to finish in the top half of the league and teams expected to finish in the bottom part of the table. For both groups, we have identified a club per league with a high probability of performing better than expected, such as whether to finish in the top three (Chelsea, Valencia, Stuttgart, Inter Milan, and Olympique Lyonnais) or in the top half (West Bromwich, Getafe, Hamburger SV, Parma, and Lorient).

The complete predictions are available to download for free on the CIES Football Observatory website.

Week by week throughout the season, you will find on our website the updated comparison between the rank expected and actually achieved by all clubs as well as the average rank gap for each league. The best results last season were recorded in Italy and Germany (on average 3.2 ranks of difference between predictions and reality), while the worst was registered in Spain (4.3). The goal for this year is to have an average gap lower than 4 in all the leagues.

We kindly invite you to send us your questions, remarks or suggestions at football.observatory@cies.ch. We wish you an enjoyable season and, of course, may your favourite team perform better than we have forecasted!

Our first paper is already accessible by clicking here. It deals with the issue of player turnover at big-five league level, by comparing strategies followed by clubs according to their results for last season. This allows us to highlight best practices in this area.

More in-depth findings on this subject and further analysis on the key success factors both from a squad make up and pitch performance perspective will be published mid-August in the seventh edition of the CIES Football Observatory Annual Review.

The specific section on player pitch performance is already available by pre-ordering the full study. For more information, please refer to our website or write to football.observatory@cies.ch.

The “Player pitch Performance” chapter allows interested parties to access essential information prior to the opening of the summer transfer window. It notably includes rankings which highlight the best performing footballers when compared to their team-mates. This data is particularly useful in identifying relatively unknown players as potential future signings.

The CIES Football Observatory Annual Review is a 96-page must-have publication for understanding the logics of success in the five major European leagues. Using a novel “demo-technic” approach, the CIES Football Observatory academic team carefully combine the study of players’ demographic profile with their on-pitch performances both at an individual and collective level.

The six chapters that make up this key reference publication cover the following areas: player selection and turnover; age structure and club experience; mobility and contracts; club pitch performance and player pitch performance. An excerpt of the last year report may be downloaded for free from our website.

To order or for further information, please contact us at: football.observatory@cies.ch

An article (in French) presenting Euro 2012 teams’ strength is to be found at the following address.

The Football Observatory also publishes daily statistics on the Swiss radio and television’s -Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS)- official website.

Other recently published articles are accessible on the web: Football Analytics and Successful Recruitment and Understanding European Football.

CIES Football Observatory’s rankings classify players according to their pitch productivity per minute played in the following areas of the game: shooting, chance creation, take on, distribution and recovery. For the general index, each indicator was weighted according to the strength of the correlation with points achieved by clubs at the end of the season.

Aggregated at team level, all of the Football Observatory indicators are significantly correlated to club results for all leagues and seasons. This ensures their relevance and objectivity. Player pitch statistics are provided by our partner company Opta.

Other big-5 league gold medal winners for the 2011-2012 season are as follows:

Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid CF) for shooting

Mesut Özil (Real Madrid CF) for chance creation

Franck Ribéry (FC Bayern München) for take on

Xavi Hernández (FC Barcelona) for distribution

Arturo Vidal (Juventus FC) for recovery

At league level, the Most Productive Players (general index) were as follows:

Lionel Messi (Spain)

David Silva (England)

Andrea Pirlo (Italy)

Franck Ribéry (Germany)

Anderson Nenê (France)

Lionel Messi is also the Football Observatory’s most decorated player of the season. In total, he achieves two gold, three silver and one bronze medal. Other multi award winners are Franck Ribéry, Andrea Pirlo, Cristiano Ronaldo, Xavi Hernández and Mathieu Valbuena (4 medals each).

The complete list of the CIES Football Observatory medal winners can be found in the special edition of our Big-5 Weekly Post, which is available for free download on our website.

Annual Review pre-ordering

Further analysis will be presented in August, when the CIES Football Observatory will publish the 7th edition of its Annual Review. The electronic version of the specific section on player performance will be already available by mid-June. This will allow interested parties accessing this essential information prior to the opening of the summer transfer window.

The player performance section notably includes rankings which highlight the best performing footballers when compared to their team-mates. This is particularly useful to identify relatively unknown potential signings. The whole section can be obtained by pre-ordering the full CIES Football Observatory’s Annual Review at a cost of ?299 + postage.

To order or for further information, please contact us at: ootball.observatory@cies.ch