The ranking of players with the highest transfer value in the world in 2023 witnessed the dominance of Haaland while the counterweight Mbappe was falling steadily.
Recently, the CIES Football Research Center has announced a ranking of the 10 most valuable players in the world as of June 2023. Here, it is not surprising that the No. 1 position belongs to the throne. Man City star Erling Haaland.
The Norwegian striker had an excellent debut season at Man City when he won the Premier League, FA Cup and reached the final of C1. Haaland also acquired a series of individual titles such as Top Scorer, Best Player and Best Young Player of the tournament and even the European Golden Shoe.
Following that, Haaland’s transfer value also increased rapidly, assessed by CIES to reach 245 million euros. The number helps him climb straight to the current position of the most expensive player in the world after only ranking 3rd and 5th in previous rankings (June 2022 and January 2023).
Behind Man City’s number 9 in the top 5 is Vinicius Jr – Real Madird (196 million euros); Bukayo Saka – Arsenal (195 million euros), Jude Bellingham – Dortmund (190 million euros) and Rodrygo Goes (185 million euros).
The position from 6-8 belongs to the Barca duo Pedri (178 million euros) – Gavi (174 million euros) along with Bayern’s morning star, Jamal Musiala (170 million euros). Meanwhile, Haaland’s Man City teammate Phil Foden is ranked 8th with a valuation of 167 million euros.
Notably, the superstar who has been considered a counterweight to Haaland so far, Kylian Mbappe, has dropped quite deeply, down to 10th place. The PSG striker is currently valued at 163 million euros by CIES. Quite surprisingly, just last year, Mbappe was ranked first and was also the third most expensive player in the world in January this year.
Explaining this, European experts said that the reason Mbappe dropped in rank was partly because the value of other players increased too quickly, like Haaland being a typical example.
It is known that the transfer value of a player is assessed on the basis of form, achievements, age (the younger the better), the number of years left in the contract, development potential and many factors such as: public influence, brand value…
With Mbappe, this striker has turned 24 years old, is the only player in the top 10 born before 2000 and has only 1 year left of his contract with PSG, so it is natural to be somewhat inferior to the juniors.
But again and again, the CIES ranking is just a relative assessment, focusing on the transfer value of a player at a certain time. Therefore, it is not a basis to assert that the more expensive player will be better than the rest.
The rankings can still be reversed in the next evaluation if the player has outstanding achievements or even signing a new contract or joining a new club will also contribute to increasing his transfer value.
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