Issue number 358 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post analyses the InStat data on the number of passes attempted per match and their average length for teams from 40 leagues worldwide. The multiplication of these two variables shows the ball circulation distance for teams during possession. This distance varies between 12.8 kilometres per match for the Scots of Celtic FC and 6.9 km for the Mexicans of Atlético San Luis.

Issue number 357 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post ranks teams from 84 top divisions worldwide according to the number of players fielded in domestic league matches during the last 365 days. The figures greatly vary from only 21 players at the Finnish side Inter Turku up to 61 for four clubs: Club Aurora (BOL), Colo Colo (CHI), EC Juventude (BRA) and Royal AM (RSA).

Issue number 356 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post analyses the data produced by our partners SkillCorner to unveil the average sprinting (>7.0 m/s or 25.2 km/h) distance per team in 26 leagues worldwide. The values stretch from 2.23km at Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United to only 1.04km at the Ukrainian side Metalist 1925 Kharkiv.

Issue number 355 of the Weekly Post ranks big-5 league clubs according to the CIES Football Observatory’s Sustainable Squad Management (SSM) Index. The latter highlights teams built to last by combining players’ age (the younger, the better), average stay in the first team squad (the longer, the better) and contract duration (the longer, the better).

Issue number 354 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presents the most active dribblers in 33 leagues worldwide according to the data of our partners InStat. Only players having attempted at least 40 dribbles in the current season (or in 2021 for the Brazilian Serie A) are included in the rankings.

AFC Ajax tops the CIES Football Observatory 2021 rankings of clubs having trained the most footballers playing in 31 top divisions of UEFA member countries. The Dutch team nurtured 81 players currently active in these championships, six more than Shakhtar Donetsk. Real Madrid and Barcelona co-head the table for players active in the five major European leagues (42).