With the opening of a new transfer window, the Football Observatory of the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) is pleased to disclose its exclusive top-100 ranking of the highest transfer values for big-5 league footballers. At the head of the table is Lionel Messi with an estimated value between 255 and 281 million €. For the first time, Eden Hazard ranks second. The Belgian is ahead of Christian Ronaldo. At club level, Champions League winner Barcelona outranks Chelsea and Real Madrid.
The CIES Football Observatory is also proud to be able to present for the first time the probabilities of fee paying transfers for big-5 league players. This was a major achievement of the research work carried out by our academic team during the last year. Many expensive footballers are to be found in the top-100 of this ranking, such as Raheem Sterling, Alexis Sánchez, Antoine Griezmann, Harry Kane and Philippe Coutinho.
More information is available in issue number 115 of the Big-5 Weekly Post (the last before the summer break). The full data is presented in the sixth edition of the CIES Football Observatory Monthly Report. This publication also explains the unique methodology developed by our research team to estimate both transfer values and transfer probabilities of football players.
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