Number of players with high attributes in certain mental/physical areas by top 5 Euro leagues

This is the total number of players from each top 5 league in Europe who are rated 15 or more in these areas. For Germany, there's an adjusted figure for what it would be if they had a 20 team league. I divided by 18 and multiplied by 20, which isn't perfect as you'd only add teams from the bottom so in reality for any 20 team Bundesliga the figure would be somewhere between the two figures given I think.

Stamina

England 227

Germany 198 (220)

Italy 167

France 147

Spain 136

Strength

England 164

France 129

Italy 123

Germany 115 (128)

Spain 92

Natural Fitness

England 236

Italy 217

Germany 197 (219)

France 191

Spain 111

Pace

England 228

Germany 172 (191)

Italy 122

France 105

Spain 95

Work Rate

England 264

Germany 210 (233)

Italy 176

France 132

Spain 191

Composure

England 113

Germany 97 (108)

Spain 85

Italy 66

France 35

What do we think - fair, not fair?

Only fair to give your opinion on that data when asking what others think.

I'd also suggest that comparing key technical attributes & more mental attributes would help remove any bias in the attributes you've selected.

Edit: How did you factor for 0(zero) entries in the data?

I've selected these attributes for a reason - particularly important I think over a season, in big games, in tight schedules etc. Of course I could show technical attributes and other attributes.

My opinion? While you can allow for small variables (maybe a lot of players in Spain are rated 14 in these areas) but the gap between England and Spain in particular is large and contributes to skewed and unrealistic results in Europe IMO.

The English leagues are traditionally considered to be more physical than their continental counterparts on the whole (and less technical), so those results didn't surprise me. Even if in recent years the top European teams seem to have found another level of conditioning.

Anecdotally the players I've had enter my file from Ligue 1 have all had to have physical attributes reduced after direct comparison to players in Premier League matches.

The English leagues are traditionally considered to be more physical than their continental counterparts on the whole (and less technical), so those results didn't surprise me.

this might have been true 20 years ago, but today with BPL full of technically gifted foreigners, i doubt it.

this might have been true 20 years ago, but today with BPL full of technically gifted foreigners, i doubt it.

It's full of foreigners, technically gifted is open for debate.

It's the money. As a league, the EPL is very attractive for top quality players, and also for not quite so top class, bit still quality players. The other top leagues in Europe can have teams within them that can offer those players deals that are just as good, a couple of these teams can even top the English ones. But as leagues, the other top 4 can't really compete with the EPL's TV money. Take a look at the wages, and it will be obvious why players of sufficient quality are - in general - more attracted to Norwich City than they are to Espanyol. Or even Frankfurt.

I'd say that of the players with sufficiently high attributes for your statistic, it is likely that a higher percentage of them will be playing in the EPL than in any of the other 4. Just as your statistic show.

Good work! Its clear for anyone that watches lots of football from all the big nations (and not just following one league) that this is not the case in real life. The research of the PL has been done biased compared to other leagues for a long time now. Hard to understand why if you watch both the results in Europe, but also if you actually watch lots of different football. The pace, the tempo, the composure of the players etc is not outstanding in PL compared to La Liga and Bundesliga for sure.

This post should have been up for discussion in the research forum, as it is the researchers that obviously think this is the right attributes.

It's not good work though, other than composure the sample focuses on attributes that are rightly or wrongly mentioned as being the most important to Premier League clubs so it's no surprise to see higher values being more common in the Premier League, a good job would have been to also compare attributes that are considered more important in other nations & see if English based player still come out on top for technical & mental ability.

It also fails to take into account the importance of coaching & management or the impact on consistent performance due to the domestic scheduled being more demanding & competitive than pretty much any other domestic league, it could well be that the Premier League does have the highest instance of elite level players but that they are worked so hard that they are unable to perform at the level come the business end of the season (March-June).

The OP has set out to prove a point & has narrowed the range of data to ensure that their point is proven.

It's very difficult to assess players on a global scale when working directly with only one team. Small studies like this are interesting and can be helpful to provide an additional sense of perspective.

I would expect the balance to shift dramatically the other way for technical and intelligence-based attributes, as well as things like Professionalism and Adaptability (British players are notoriously poor at going abroad). If they don't then there are certainly issues that need addressing.

To be honest I am not suprised by the results. The measured attributes are those which are traditionally favoured in the English league. I would be interested to see more technical attributes measured such as: first touch, technique, passing and also the mental attributes such as: flair and vision and see how England would come out in those. I would expect the Spanish league, to be much closer to the English and in some of those cases higher.

I did the same for Vision, Technique, Passing, First Touch and Decisions across the 5 leagues. Spain beats England comfortably in every area other than Passing which is equal at 94. England beats every other country in each area. Worth saying the English ones are slightly skewed (by 5-10 in each category) by the high number of good players out on loan abroad who are counted as English based, including good technical players like Cuadrado, Jovetic, Balotelli, Luis Alberto, Layun, Marin, Van Ginkel, Kramaric, Markovic, Cabella, Thauvin etc.

England

Vision 62

Technique 128

Passing 94

Decisions 58

First Touch 91

Spain

Vision 70

Technique 139

Passing 94

Decisions 74

First Touch 101

Italy

Vision 53

Technique 102

Passing 67

Decisions 50

First Touch 74

Germany

Vision 51 (56)

Technique 89 (99)

Passing 39 (43)

Decisions 47 (52)

First Touch 84 (93)

France

Vision 26

Technique 93

Passing 31

Decisions 12

First Touch 41

Any chance you could format that list in the same way you did the first? i.e ranking based on each attribute?

Thanks.

... in the same way you did the first?

He is not the same guy:)