List of the 20 most valuable footballers

At the top end of the chart, Messi’s value is almost twice that of Ronaldo’s. The report’s author’s say: ‘This is mainly related to the younger age of the Argentinian prodigy, who was born 28 months after the Portuguese superstar.

‘However, with respect to the last year, Messi’s market value has gone down (by €19m) while that of Ronaldo increased (by €4m).

Only Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, with a ‘starting price’ of £161.5m and Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo, worth at least £85.2m, are valued more than Liverpool striker Luis Suarez, who is worth £79 million – at least, according to the study compiled by a Swiss-based expert ‘think tank’.



The CIES Football Observatory have details of various trensfers and the actual prices paid in each of them over recent years, and have now published their annual review of players – including ‘market values’.

The value represents how much each player would be worth in transfer market this summer and a huge range of information was needed in order to arrive at the various market values. Such information considered included: age, the length of contract remaining, position, performance data, international experience and the level at which the players are working.

After a very fantastic season enjoyed by Liverpool star striker Suarez,27, he has risen up the rankings of ‘most wanted’ among a string of elite clubs. The CIES study brackets his market value at between £79.4m and £92.3m which is a huge increase from the £22.8m Liverpol paid to Ajax for his services.

The fourth most valuable man on the list is Chelsea’s Belgium starlet, Eden Hazard, 23, reckoned to be worth at least £61.2m. Chelsea paid around half that sum two years ago.

The top 10 is completed by Paul Pogba of Juventus, Real Madrid’s Gareth Bale – rated at £47.1m at least, or considerably less than he cost last summer – then Arsenal’s Mesut Ozil, PSG’s Edinson Cavani and Bayern Munich’s Mario Gotze.

Of the 20 highest valued players, nine of them play in the Premier League, for now at least, seven in Spain’s La Liga, two in Germany’s Bundesliga (Mario Gotze and Thomas Muller at Bayern Munich), one in France’s Ligue 1 (Cavani at PSG) and one in Italy’s Serie A (Pogba).

Culled from 90mins