CIES have published their latest study, and this time they’ve been attempting to find the best young players in world football in 2022.
The Football Observatory use mathematical formulae to rank players based on individual showings, minutes played and the performance of a player’s team to give each young player a ranking, and as you can imagine, a number of Premier League stars rank highly.
Erling Haaland and Phi Foden both get scores above 90 in this rating system, while the likes of Anthony Elanga and Harvey Elliott also score highly and make the top 250.
Tottenham are represented on this list by Dejan Kulusevski who scores 82.2 out of 100, while Destiny Udogie also ranks as one of the best players born in 2002, scoring a 76 out of 100.
Udogie, of course, joined Tottenham earlier this summer before heading back to Udinese on loan, and based on this research they’ve landed an absolute gem.
A score of 76 ranks Udogie higher than the likes of Tino Livramento – who was a Premier League star last season and Benjamin Sesko – who has just joined RB Leipzig for £55m.
Of course, Sesko is a striker and Udogie is a wing-back, so the valuations are widely different for a number of reasons, but based on this ranking, the £15m move for Udogie earlier in this transfer window looks like an absolute bargain.
Whether or not Udogie kicks on and fulfils his potential remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure, Tottenham have managed to get their hands on one of the brightest young talents in Italy with this young man.
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