Benfica has once again been ranked as the world’s leading football academy for the third year in a row, topping the latest global youth development study published by the CIES Football Observatory.
The Lisbon club recorded a training index of 101.3 points, the highest of any club analysed, with 93 Benfica-trained players currently active across 49 top-flight leagues around the world.
Of those 93 players, four are currently playing for Benfica’s first team, while 14 are competing in Europe’s five major leagues.
The result sees Benfica retain its place at the top of a ranking which measures more than simply the number of professional players produced.
CIES takes into account the number of academy graduates still active at a high level, the strength of the competitions in which they play, their playing time over the previous year and their age – with greater value placed on younger players establishing themselves in senior football.
For the purposes of the study, a player is considered to have been trained by a club if he spent at least three years there between the seasons of his 15th and 21st birthdays.
Sporting also among the top-10
Benfica finished ahead of two of South America’s most famous talent factories, River Plate and Boca Juniors, who completed the top three.
Vélez Sarsfield was fourth, followed by Ajax in fifth and Barcelona in sixth, while another Portuguese club, Sporting CP, also featured in the world top 10, ranking seventh.
Benfica’s youth system, based at the adidas Benfica Campus in Seixal, has developed a long list of players who have gone on to perform at the highest levels of European football, from Bernardo Silva, João Cancelo and Rúben Dias to João Neves and Gonçalo Ramos.
Michael Bruxo
Journalist for the Portugal Resident.