November 12 – Franco Mastantuono, Gessime Yassine and Lamine Yamal are among the best young performers in world football according to the latest CIES analysis, although none of them come out on top.
This belongs to Swiss striker Lutfi Dalipi.
The 20-year-old, currently on loan at Swiss club FC Vaduz from parent club Young Boys, leads the CIES Football Observatory’s new ranking of under-21 players who have been above the level of their peers this season.
Dalipi recorded a relative performance rating of 1.86, ahead of Benfica winger Gianluca Prestianni on 1.72 and Racing Santander winger Jorge Salinas on 1.64.
The ranking is not meant to decide whether Dalipi is a better footballer than Yamal or anyone else, but rather how each player performs compared to the players around him, and it’s fair to say that there is a big jump between FC Vaduz and Yamal’s Barcelona.
This naturally opens the door to some names that may require a Google search, with the main names consisting of Dalipi and Jorge Salinas of Racing Santander.
Dalipi has five goals and nine assists in his first 12 Swiss league games for Vaduz, having joined on loan from Young Boys in the summer.
Mastantuono, property of Real Madrid, is the best classified of the first 5 leagues. The Argentine, currently on loan at Fiorentina, ranks fourth overall with an index of 1.59.
Strasbourg’s Gessime Yassine remains in fifth place with the same score, continuing the French club’s recent habit of giving important minutes to young players. Previously, the CIES has classified Strasbourg among the most youthful clubs in major European football.
Yamal from Barcelona is ninth at 1.56.
That may seem shockingly low for a player who has spent much of the past two years racking up individual accolades and record numbers, but the methodology works against players surrounded by elite performers.
The youngest name in the CIES wider top 100 is Philadelphia Union’s 17-year-old American Cavan Sullivan, who has already agreed a future move to Manchester City, although it is unclear how he will be affected by City’s upcoming punishment with its severity still up in the air.
Contact the writer of this story, Harry Ewing, at (email protected)