The 22 Under 22 [Soccer Card Edition] Part One: xA and xG This Season

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One cool thing that Australian Football does is a yearly 22Under22 - which is basically a team of the best players under 22 (There’s 22 players in an Australian Football matchday squad)

Oh, and when I say Australian Football, I don’t mean soccer. I mean this….

On a side now, right now, my handful of Aussie readers are doing these ones…

Anyway, I like the concept of 22 players under 22 for the season - so I’m going to do something similar with soccer prospects.

Basically I’ll be looking at a range of statistics with prospects from the top five leagues and see how they stack up against each other.

Towards the end of the season I’ll give my final 22 under 22.

To qualify, you had to be under 22 at the start of the season.

Test One - Expected Goals and Expected Assists

For the first test, I thought I’d go with something basic. Expected goals plus expected assists.

Goals and assists are the glory stats that seem to make the most impact on the hobby, so it’s an easy place to start.

I’ve gone with expected goals and assists because I’m looking to reward making the right play (taking the shot or playing good passes) instead of looking at half a seasons’ worth of scoring data.

And instead of looking at the stats on a per90 basis, I’m just looking at total - that favors players who play every week. Which, considering we’re looking at creating a list of the top 22 prospects under 22, I’d assume you’d want some that are playing consistently.

Results

So, with that I’ve taken the expected goals and expected assists for all players 22 and under in the top five European leagues this season.

Here are the results, sorted by total xG + xA.

Note: Due to scheduling and a generally busy week, I’m writing this halfway through a weekend of matches - so these are accurate at the time of writing.

Now, SubStack (the newsletter tool that I use) won’t let me create cool tables with links and all that cool stuff (eyeroll). So if you’re interested, here are the links to all players’ rookie cards on eBay.

1. K. Mbappe

2. A. Gouiri

3. E. Haaland

4. H. Aouar

5. J. Sancho

6. D. Vlahović

7. Pedro Neto

8. R. Faivre

9. A. Isak

10. S. Wamangituka

11. M. Kean

12. M. Mount

13. B. Saka

14. M. Barrow

15. Matheus Cunha

16. M. Diaby

17. N. González

18. Dani Olmo

19. R. Kolo Mouani

20. Bryan Gil

21. J. David

22. João Félix

Notable omissions: Phil Foden, Rafael Leão, Dejan Kulusevski, Pedri, among others.

Three Key Takeaways

1. I know it’s boring, but Mbappe will always be at the top of pretty much any stat deep-dive for players 22 and under throughout Europe. He’s that good.

2. The French league is an absolute breeding ground for productive young players. However, keep in mind that it doesn’t always mean that they’ll pan out elsewhere. Still, there’s a lot of young guys getting a lot of opportunity at a high level in France. God I wish they had a card set - I’d even be happy with a Chronicles set!

3. It’s going to be really interesting to see how the top ten shake out. I think I could have maybe picked seven or eight of the top ten without looking - but there’s a few smokeys in there. There’s so much young talent right now. This test will be a good one to combine with others going forward. I think there’s going to be a lot of snubs in this top 22 at the end of the season.

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