Top Creative Passing Prospects From The Top European Leagues
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Finding creative players is always a hard ask when looking at statistics. The end-result to look for is an assist, but there’s so much that needs to happen for an assist. A lot of it isn’t even done by the person that’s credited with that assist.
For example, a player usually needs to be in a good goal scoring position for someone else to get an assist.
So, as you can imagine, a lot of these creativity numbers usually favor players in the better teams. This isn’t always the way to find the best players. However, at the end of the day, we aren’t a football club’s analytics department (yet), so we don’t need the entire 360-degree view on everything.
We just need to know more today than we knew yesterday.
And in a hobby where knowledge is power, it’s probably getting more important every month.
In this article, we’ll look at two statistics that I like to look at when checking out a player’s creativity and likelihood to get assists.
The Statistics
When looking at creative passing, there’s a cool little stat-combo that I like to check out.
Shot Assists: Expected assists is a handy stat for sure, but it can be a little muddy from time to time. I like to also look at shot assists for a more well-rounded number. You can also look to combine both and see what the expected assist is per shot assist, but that’s probably a little more than is needed for most of us.
Through Balls: One factor that really boosts a player’s expected goal is if they’re on the receiving end of a through ball. More often than not, a player who is running through from a through ball is facing a one-on-one with the keeper, or at the very least is in a good position and more often than not already facing the goal without a defender near them. In fact, the guys at StatsBomb (a group who work with clubs, and have a premium statistic database that costs an arm and a leg) have toyed with modifying expected goal algorithms to give boosts to shots that come from through balls.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of other numbers you can look at to get the full picture, but these two are a cool little combo to start with.
The Test
I took the prospects (25 and under) from the top five European leagues over the last calendar year and put on the following parameters to find the very best in show.
At least one shot assist, and one through ball per 90 minutes
At least 1500 minutes over the last year to get those with
Keep in mind when looking at numbers like these, there’s a few caveats:
The top five leagues aren’t created equal
A player’s creative passing numbers can be dictated by a team’s game plan. Hence why you don’t see any Arsenal players on lists like this anymore
With those parameters, you do get some interesting results though.
But to get more an idea about how this compares to the rest of the players, I’ll break it down a little further.
I took all the passing numbers from attacking players in the top five leagues in Europe and took the top 10% of each statistic.
The players in the green square are top 10% in both numbers
The players in the red are in the top 10% for through balls, and above average in shot-assists
The players in the purple are top 10% for shot assists, and above average in through balls
The players in the blue square are above average at both numbers
Results
When looking at through balls, it’s slightly skewed to players that play more of a central role on the pitch. However, this is changing as the inverted winger becomes more of a norm.
For those who may not be aware with the term, an inverted winger is a winger that plays on the opposite side to their natural foot. For example, right-footed players used to mainly play on the right, and vice versa for left players on the left-side. This would make it easier for players to whip in crosses and stay wide, giving width to attack.
An inverted winger is when you see a right-footed winger play on the left. This means that the player usually has to cut in towards the middle to play the ball. This gives an extra body in the middle of the field to control the ball, and the extra width in attack is usually provided by a full-back (the left and right back). This is used to help give attacking teams a numerical advantage when attacking.
It’ll be interesting to see how these numbers change as we see more and more inverted wingers.
Players That Stand Out
There were some obvious stand-outs for me here, along with a few others that I want to show some love to.
Each link on a player’s name will take you straight to their eBay page, so maybe try right-clicking and opening in a new tab.
Lorenzo Pellegrini is a great player for Roma, and his passing numbers are excellent. Super underrated.
Kimmich is arguably the best central midfielder on the planet right now. So it’s no surprise to see him here.
Odegaard and James Maddison are probably the two most surprising players on the list for me. I did see them as creative passers, but to be to 10% in both numbers is truly elite.
Jadon Sancho is getting a great number of shot assists per match. Which does push back on the notion that he’s getting held up by Erling Haaland’s crazy scoring rate.
I feel like Joao Felix, Marcus Rashford, and Matheus Cunha are on all of these top lists.
Daichi Kamada is another name you might not have expected. The young Japanese midfielder is the main creative engine at Eintracht Frankfurt
Lo Celso is having a high through ball number isn’t surprising seeing how Tottenham play
Manuel Locatelli is a bloody star
Angelo Fulgini is the under-the-radar guy that most would not have heard of
One player that didn’t make the cut, because he missed out on making the cut on through balls by 0.02 a game is Christopher Nkunku. However, he’s 2.73 shot assists per 90, which is by far the best on this list.
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