The football talent map of Europe has been redrawn, with England at its centre, according to a new analysis, and English players really are getting better.
Data analysts have modelled the spread of talent across Europe, since the advent of competitive club competition in the late 1950s and 60s and they have reached both encouraging – and unsettling – conclusions.
During the last six decades, the once-dominant talent factories of eastern Europe, like Budapest Honved, CDNA Sofia (later CSKA) and Torpedo Moscow, have closed.
Once upon-a-time those Soviet powerhouses produced prodigious talents and Ballon d’Or contenders such as Bulgaria’s best-ever goalkeeper, Georgi Naydenov, football’s ‘first superstar, Hungarian Ferenc Puskas, and the ‘Russian Pele’ Eduard Streltsov.