Erling Haaland has set the Premier League alight in the short time he's been at Manchester City, but that doesn't mean he's as big of a prospect as one of his teammates and a former City attacker.
That's according to the CIES Football Observatory, who have devised a new metric — 'Impact Score' — with which to rank the 250 hottest prospects born in the year 2000 or after, across 59 leagues worldwide.
"Impact Score is calculated from the average match level in which players participated according to the 'experience capital' method, their amount of official game minutes played over the last 365 days and their pitch performance compared to both teammates and opponents, as well as with respect to players with the same technical profile as per the role-based approach also freshly developed by the CIES Football Observatory research team," said the ranking compilers.
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Haaland, of course, ranks pretty highly with a score of 91.3, but that only puts him as the seventh hottest prospect out of players born in 2000. Real Madrid's Vinicius Junior tops that age category with a score of 100, while City teammate Phil Foden ranks fourth with 92.8.
Interestingly, Spanish forward Ferran Torres — who City sold to Barcelona for £55m in January — finds himself just above Haaland in fifth with 91.8.
Of course, the fact that these rankings are calculated on performances over the past year must be taken into account. Over the 12 month period ending on 25th August, Haaland featured in 3,076 minutes, whereas Torres and Foden played more — 3,115 and 3,862 respectively.
City's £51m summer signing has started the season in fine form, scoring six goals in four league games including a hat-trick in his second home appearance. Should Haaland avoid any lengthy spells on the sidelines this season, it seems likely that he will shoot up the rankings.
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