CIES have published their latest report, and this time the Football Observatory have been producing technical profiles on some of the game’s biggest names.
These technical profiles can be used to compare players to one another in order to find similarities and differences in their styles of play, and there are some interesting results.
One thing CIES did was to find which players in European football are the most similar to Kylian Mbappe, and the results were, honestly, rather surprising.
Perhaps it’s not too much of a shock to hear that Mohamed Salah was in the top five in terms of players who were most similar to Mbappe, but who placed number one may shock you.
It’s not another Frenchman, it’s not another speedster. In fact, it’s not even another attacker.
Indeed, it’s Leicester City’s James Maddison.
The England international has the most similar technical profile to Mbappe when taking into account the 11 metrics used by CIES to profile players, and that’s somewhat surprising.
When you think of Mbappe, you think of a lightning-quick attacker who is clinical in front of goal, while Maddison is a playmaking number 10 who is deadly from set-pieces.
However, the eye test isn’t everything in football, and the stats show that Maddison actually performs a number of similar actions to Mbappe on the pitch.
It is interesting to look at these findings with the knowledge that Arsenal tried to sign Maddison in the summer in mind. The Gunners were apparently very keen on the midfielder before the start of the 2021/22 season, and we have to wonder whether or not they’d made similar findings in their analysis of the former Norwich man.
In the end, Arsenal missed out on Maddison, and he continues to shine for Leicester.
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