Theo Hernandez of AC Milan celebrates with his team-mate Rafael Leao

CIES: Milan have €762m of players under contract – where the valuation ranks

Photo by Marco Luzzani/Getty Images

A study has been published which ranks world clubs in terms of the calculated market value of the players that they have under contract, with AC Milan and Inter right next to each other.

The 475th CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post has published a list of the 100 clubs worldwide whose players have the highest aggregate transfer value, and it also includes players who are on loan to other teams.

It is perhaps no surprise that Real Madrid lead the way with a combined squad market value of €1.728bn, and it is quite far ahead of Manchester City who are in second with €1.471bn. Another English club, Chelsea FC, are third with €1.388bn.

Milan have 47 players registered – which is actually one of the highest numbers – for a combined value of €762m, therefore a per-player average of €16.2m. That puts them 14th in the overall ranking.

Inter are one place above on €800m across 41 players, while Juventus are three places below with their €697m total spread across 46 registered players. Napoli (€598m) and Atalanta (€568m) are the other Serie A clubs in the top 30.

 

The site explains how they determine values: “The estimates were calculated on the basis of a statistical model developed exclusively by the CIES Football Observatory, using a methodology explained in this peer-reviewed paper recently published in the International Journal of Financial Studies.

“The estimated transfer values of the best-valued player by club in over 60 leagues worldwide are available free of charge in this online tool.”

Back in May, CIES had Milan star Rafael Leao as the most valuable player in Serie A ahead of the likes of Lautaro Martinez and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, but now Lautaro has jumped ahead.

Tags AC Milan

13 Comments

  1. It seems a bit ridiculous that Lautauro has moved upwards as he has scored two goals against Udinese in this Serie A season and in last season he scored in May and then last time before that scored a goal against Atalanta back in late February 2024.
    I would question such algorithm as it seems pretty flawed from the looks of it.

    1. Nothing ridiculous here.
      A month later Lautaro won the scudetto and was named serie A MVP.
      Another month later Lautaro won Copa America and won the Copa America golden boot.
      There is more football than just serie A.
      BTW, what has Leao done since May to not move down?
      How many goals has he scored since May?
      Nothing flawed here.

      1. Well you got a point in regard of Coppa America golden boot but clearly he has been having some rather dubious stats for Serie A since February so if anything there is a point there as well.
        Leao hasn’t been perfect far from it but pretty sure his stats in that span of time is a lot better and Lautauro plays in a better position to score more so I’m not really that convinced.

        1. Lautaro is the best player in the league where Leao plays, while Leao isn’t even the best player in the team he plays.
          Players values are like the stock market. It goes up and down.
          Lautaro’s value goes up, Leao’s goes down.
          One of them was his NT team’s best player and scored the most goals at the continental tournament, while the other had the most yellow cards for simulations at the Euro’s.

          1. “while the other had the most yellow cards for simulations at the Euro’s”

            Haha I forgot about that!

            Still we know what Leao is capable of, it’s a shame that Milan doesn’t have the right coach to maximise the strengths of the players. Fonseca was obviously hired to develop players but the best ones are regressing while the young ones don’t even play.

          2. I reckon Lautauro as a really great player no question there but it doesn’t change the fact that he hasn’t really been great there for over half a year.
            If anything both players values should be going downwards, Anyways we don’t have to agree and that’s also fine.

          3. As IKWYDLS mentioned further down Lautauro renewed his contract recently so I actually tend to agree that he holds a higher value than Leao so my bad.

  2. You guys should probably just go check the actual paper itself and figure out how the value is calculated. Sporting is only one side of it. Most of the value of players actually come from the remaining duration and size of the contract. Martinez recently renewed at a high rate no? Well there’s value for you which could possibly beat out other factors. Most valuable player from a sporting perspective is different from most valuable player from a financial perspective.
    The aspects of value considered were contract length/size, players age, position, player performance (goals, minutes, starting XI, intl), league and club buying/selling power.
    For the stats ppl go check it out. It’s a good read but they could have used a more sophisticated model like a hierarchical model. And they should have made a distinction in the transfers between different leagues vs within leagues. Ie “import” is better thing.
    But still the

    1. You are absolutely right as I didn’t think about that he recently renewed his contract and that certainly plays into the equation.

      1. No probs. He also renewed on higher wages too. However over time this will diminish in value faster than Leao just because age (+2yrs) might play a role as well as how contracts work themselves (the fewer the years remaining the lower the value of the player…which is why I guess we buy in that region). All else equal though ie they keep their current performances.
        Interesting in the paper, it also mentions most transfers are below $20m. Like the Vast majority are ,10m and under. The ones which get highlighted are ofc the ones over 20m are actually the odd ones out. But there were about 10% of them between 10-20m which is our zone

        Also forgot to finish at the end there by saying “But still the model seems a good start”

        1. Yeah I’m fully aware that lengths of contracts plays into valuations of players but just didn’t think about it as Inter is fairly low on my radar in regard of contracts, not sure how salaries would play into it unless players are paid very high wages which could affect how easily a player can be sold which then could affect the sales price.
          It doesnt surprice me that most players cost fairly little because most league and clubs simply cant pay outrageous fees or salaries for that matter.

          On a completely different matter I had a very weird experience in the last hour. I help taking care of my dying mother so we have nurses coming here several times a day. Then while they was here and i sat in front of my pc someone started knocking heavily on their front door and I went out to see if an extra one had arrived. It turned out to be an angry drunken idiot who was furious that the nurses had parked their car a bit up on the pavement. Then the fella started shouting and racially abusing both the male and female nurses so I told him to quiet down and show some respect towards them and then leave our premises. He refused to leave and invited me to fight him 😀 then he threatened the nurses as well and I almost clubbered him one in the face but my father told me to calm down 😀 Super weird but gotta say He had me fly up in temper and I probably would have done something stupid as I probably could have kicked his rearend badly as he was both older, shorter, fatter and drunk on top of it and I’m currently sober and has been in a lot of fights over the years even against a handful of people at times 😀
          Weird world we live in 😀

          1. Lol maybe it was your future self who came back in time to have one more go as he misses a good fight and a bit of beer 😂😂😂 all jokes aside sorry to hear about your mum. Hope all goes well for you in that space 🙏

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