Irish Leagues rank high on worldwide list of clubs with highest percentage of U21 players

Compiled by the CIES Football Observatory which specialises in the statistical analysis of football, the study presents the percentage of minutes played in the current season or the last completed one by U21 players from 1,292 clubs across the globe.

The League of Ireland is ranked third of the 93 top leagues worldwide with a percentage of 28.8% while the Irish League comes in 26th with 17.8%!

Irish clubs feature prominently with 10 clubs from either the League of Ireland or Irish League using U21 players above 20% of total minutes played during the course of a season - illustrating clearly that both leagues are willing to give young players the chance to flourish and prove their talent in the first team.

At league level, the playing time of U21 footballers stretched from 29.0% in the Slovak Super Liga to only 3.7% in the Saudi Pro League and the Turkish Süper Lig.

In South America, the figures vary from 21.2% in Uruguay to 11.1% in Brazil. The French Ligue 1 is the major European league with the highest percentage of minutes by U21 players (15.0%) while the Spanish Liga is at the opposite end of the table (7.0%)

However the list makes promising reading for both the FAI and IFA as clubs on both sides of the border are clearly intent on developing promising youngsters.

Indeed, UCD, unsurprisingly, are ranked the highest Irish club on the list (3rd) with U21s completing a whopping 78% of total minutes played during the 2019 Airtricity League campaign.

Next up is Danske Bank Premiership outfit, Warrenpoint Town who are 13th on the list with their U21 representatives playing over half (55%) of their total minutes this season!

Dublin club, Bohemians (53.3%) and Waterford (32.7%) make up the top three in the League of Ireland while Dungannon Swifts (36.6%) and Institute (23.3%) make up the top three in the Irish League.

The highest figures at club level per confederation were recorded for the reserve team of Wellington Phoenix in New Zealand (93.3%), the Young Lions in Singapore (81.1%), University College Dublin (78.0%), Cavalier in Jamaica (58.1%), Universidad San Martín in Peru (56.6%) and NA Hussein Dey in Algeria (40.0%).

In the big five, the highest value was measured for Lille (32.1%), while four clubs did not field U21 players (Levante, Crystal Palace, Union Berlin and Sheffield United).

Among the top European leagues, the French Ligue 1 ranked 36th, the Scottish Premier League 45th, German Bundesliga 66th, English Premiership 74th, Italy's Serie A 76th and the Spanish Liga 71st.

The top ranked clubs in each of those top leagues were (France) Lille (31.1%), (Scotland) St Johnstone 18.8%, (Germany), Dortmund (66%), (England) Norwich (24.2%), (Italy) Genoa (19.2%) and (Spain) Real Madrid (13.1%).

Other notable European clubs were Celtic (18.7%), Liverpool (9%), Barcelona (5.4%), PSG (11.1%), Man United (13.7%), Athletico Madrid (12%), Bayern Munich (7.4%), Man City (2.3%), Inter Milan (5.3%), Arsenal (1%) and Rangers (1.7%).

See where your club ranks in our Irish club list here.