CRISTIANO RONALDO is set to end the decade outside of the top THIRTY best players in Europe, according to one performance index.
CIES Football Observatory’s InStat ranking of every player in the continent’s top 35 leagues has the Juventus forward stuck in 31st place.
How the top ten pans out
With an index score of 331, Ronaldo is well behind Ballon d’Or rival and top-ranked player Lionel Messi amid a rollercoaster spell in Serie A.
The Barcelona star’s rating of 422 even blows second place’s score of 373 out the water, that honour going to Ajax’s Hakim Ziyech.
Neymar completes the podium before his Paris Saint-Germain compadres Kylian Mbappe and Angel Di Maria.
The CIES index is a widely well-regarded analytic tool used to assess players on objectively.
With statistics playing an increasingly prominent role in scouting and transfers, fans dismissing the leaderboard should think twice.
RB Leipzig striker Timo Werner comes in at sixth place before Sadio Mane, Kevin De Bruyne, Ciro Immobile and Riyad Mahrez.
Further down the list, Andrew Robertson (12th), Atalanta ace Papu Gomez (13th), Dimitri Payet (15th) and Willy Boly (34th) are all scored highly.
That leaves the likes of Mohamed Salah (29th), Eden Hazard (45th) and Frenkie de Jong (257th) well back than perhaps expected.
Ronaldo’s Juve may be back on top of Serie A but he is struggling to hit his high individual standardsCredit: AFP or licensors
The list names Keylor Navas, Zenit Saint Petersburg’s Mikhail Kerzhakov and Wojciech Szczesny as the joint-best goalkeepers in Europe right now – and Virgil van Dijk the top defender.
Down at the other end of the standings, which only consider those who have played at least 450 minutes in 2019/20, is the Premier League’s worst-ranked footballer Jay Rodriguez and his index score of 230.
But spare a thought for Nikola Asceric, who plays up front for Serbian Super Liga bottom club Macva Sabac and has the lowest index (174) of all the players in the top 35 leagues – putting him in 8626th place.
Cristiano Ronaldo loses his cool in Juventus training and smashes three balls into the air
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
