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There are Arsenal, Tottenham and Man Utd stars who can’t compare to stars either side of the Old Firm divide.
A pair of Rangers and Celtic attackers have been named in the top 50 forward players across world football.
CIES Football Observatory has used its number crunching methods to get to the bottom of who does final third play best in the game right now, listing the top 100 overall. There are some star studded names mentioned in the top 10 as the calibre of opponent the Rangers and Celtic pair are up against fully comes to light.
Their working reads: “The 495th CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presents the world’s 100 best performing players from an attacking perspective in terms of their statistics in three areas of the game: take on, chance creation and finishing. Michael Olise tops the rankings with an average index of 88.5 in these three domains and a maximum value of 99 in chance creation.
“The Bayern Munich's French international is ahead of Barcelona's Spaniard Lamine Yamal (87.7) and Bayer Leverkusen's German Florian Wirtz (85.0). The top 10 also includes two Brazilians (Vinícius Júnior and Savinho), two Frenchmen (Ousmane Dembélé and Désiré Doué), an Englishman (Bukayo Saka), an Egyptian (Mohamed Salah) and a Dutchman (Noa Lang).
“The latter is the top-ranked player active outside the big-5 European leagues. He is ahead of Estêvão Willian (Palmeiras, on loan from Chelsea) and Rodri Sánchez (Al-Arabi). The oldest players in the top 100 are Iago Aspas (Celta Vigo), Karim Benzema (Al-Ittihad) and Yacine Brahimi (Al-Gharafa). Only footballers who played at least 1,080 minutes during the current season were taken into account.”
Kuhn and Cerny hit the top 50
In the Celtic corner, it is Nicolas Kuhn who ranks above his Rangers counterpart in Vaclav Cerny, both of whom are enjoying stellar seasons on the flanks for either side of the Old Firm. Kuhn comes in at 23rd place and is labelled an “infiltrator creator” with finishing stats better than some of those in the heady heights of the top 10. Cerny is further down the list in 41st as a “shooter infiltrator” but it’s still a fine achievement consider the likes of Tottenham’s Heung-Min Son, Arsenal’s Leandro Trossard and Man Utd leader Bruno Fernandes are all way down the pecking order. Cerny and Kuhn are the only two players from Scotland on the list.
Futures uncertain
Both have uncertain futures. Kuhn has been linked with a move to Newcastle United while Cerny is only on loan at Rangers from Wolfsburg. His agent said of chances in moving to Ibrox permanently in the summer this month: "I can't say what will happen next, but I don't think it's very realistic for him to stay at Rangers. His contract at Wolfsburg ends in the summer of 2027, so I would assume that the club will want to recall him, or there will be interested parties who would like to buy him.”
Addressing his future with the Sunday Mirror, Kuhn said this month: : “When I signed here, I said the challenge was to win everything. And so far, it has been really great to be here, I’ve really liked it. Hopefully, there will be some more trophies to come this season. And my contract here runs until 2029, so I’m very much looking forward to what is ahead.”