Many were stunned that Kylian Mbappé was ranked as low as 10th in the CIES Football Observatory ranking of the 10 most valuable players in the world.
Mbappé, World Cup winner, World Cup Golden Boot winner and a host of other individual honours ranked lower than Vinicius Jr, Bukayo Saka, Pedri, Foden and others, is this playing?
While you might be shocked that he ranked as low as 10th, it is the position he should occupy based on the metrics of the CIES Football Observatory
In calculating the value of a player, they take into cognizance, the player’s age, position, goals, assists, number of appearances for their national team and the DURATION OF HIS EXISTING CONTRACT.
Yet, you would still feel that he should rank higher based on the above metrics but you will be neglecting two factors by doing so-one being that he is older than everyone on the list and the length of his current contract is also shorter than the others.
Mbappé signed a three-year extension contract with PSG in 2022 which is realistically a two-year contract because there is a clause in the contract that says he has the discretion to extend his current contract for one more year this month.
This means, his existing contract expires in 2024 and he could agree to join a new club on a free by January 2024 if he doesn’t trigger the extension clause.
What this implies in this discourse is that his valuation will be lower in comparison to other players with longer contracts and you will want to agree with me that is what is obtainable in the transfer market.
As explained by the popular Spanish outlet, Diario AS, what CIES did with their current valuation was to calculate the hypothetical value of a player with three or more years on his contract. All players listed above Mbappe have a longer existing contract and are younger, thus the reason he is languishing at 10th.
He would have ranked higher if he had a longer contract even with his age. Therefore, CIES are right with their ranking.
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