Europe's best players in 2021: Messi, Lewandowski and Jorginho?!

CIES Football Observatory revealed its list of the best performers in the top 5 European leagues, and there were a few surprises. The organization revealed its ranking comparing each club's best player this calendar year irrespective of their position, using a unique methodology to produce a scoring system for league matches since January 1.

In addition to the formula used to calculate the odds, CIES only considered players who spent at least two-thirds of their time on the field in domestic competition. And of course, the research was done only for players from the League Five clubs, since the odds for the Premier League, Primera, Bundesliga, Serie A, and League 1 are the highest. At the list of 98 teams from the five strongest competitions on the European continent are the results of only the players with the highest index per club. For that reason, there are no numerous stars of European club football on the list.

The first place on the list is - Lionel Messi. After the elimination of Barcelona from the Champions League, Messi can now dedicate himself to winning the title in the Spanish championship. According to the announcement of CIES, the Argentine ace has the highest index of 92.5 out of a possible 100. In 2021, Messi is playing at the peak of his form, with 16 goals and seven assists. Of the possible thirteen championship games, he did not score a goal in only two. On the road, Huesca redeemed himself with an assist, while he missed the match against Elche in the Basque Country due to a red card. Of his 16 goals, he even shook the net twice six times.

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The second position belongs to Robert Lewandowski. Probably the best center forward in today’s modern football, he will set standards in 2021 as well, so he collected 18 goals and two more final passes in thirteen Bundesliga appearances. That brought him 89.5 index points. He scored a hat-trick twice in that period, in two of the last three rounds. He scored two more goals twice, and out of a possible 1,170 minutes, he missed only 64.

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A huge surprise is Chelsea’s Jorginho, who has an identical coefficient as the Bayern striker. A complete surprise on this list, but the Italian national team player, originally from Brazil, is statistically the most useful player in Chelsea and the Premier League. How? People from the CIES Observatory know this best. Compared to Messi and Lewandowski, Jorginho does not have such a good performance, only three goals, and he missed three of the possible thirteen games of the Premier League this year.

Only two Premier League stars made the top ten, with Wilfried Ndidi coming out on top as Leicester City's best player and the third-best star from the English top-flight with 85.3 points. Harry Kane was rated as Tottenham's top star, while new Liverpool signing Thiago Alcantara came out first for the struggling Reds. Granit Xhaka is the top Gunner in 2021, according to CIES.