CIES’ latest study has been attempting to find the most impactful players in world football under the age of 25.
The Football Observatory have used a role-based approach to find the top 10 most impactful young players in each of their 15 categories, and one Newcastle man ranks highly in the ‘shooter creator’ bracket.
A ‘shooter creator’ is a player whose most important role on the pitch is to get shots off and create chances, so, as you can imagine, a number of top attackers make this list.
Bukayo Saka ranks as the most impactful of the U25 bunch according to CIES’ research, while Newcastle’s Alexander Isak is fourth behind Chelsea’s Mason Mount.
Interestingly, despite only scoring six league goals last season, Isak ranked as more impactful than Erling Haaland in this study.
Of course, stats aren’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to football analysis. After all, it’s hard to argue that a player with six league goals last season is more impactful than a player who scored 22, but based on the fact that Isak was more of an ever-present in a lesser-performing team, he has, technically, been more impactful than Haaland.
Whether or not we should put much credence into this study is up for debate. On one hand, it’s an interesting look at how important individual players are to each team, but on the other hand, CIES’ definition if ‘impactful’ seems to need some tweaking if Isak is ranking higher than Haaland.
Regardless of the Isak vs Haaland debate that this study has brought up, the fact that the Swedish striker is even making the top 10 of a list like this bodes very well for Newcastle after making Isak their club-record signing this summer.
Whether or not Isak can be as impactful for Newcastle as he was for Sociedad remains to be seen.
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