Chelsea sign the oldest players in Europe on average with PSG outside the top 10

As reported by the CIES Football Observatory, in their analysis of over 3,500 transfers carried out in the last ten seasons across Europe’s top five leagues, OGC Nice and Lille were found to be the teams recruiting the youngest players of all Ligue 1 sides. 

Perhaps surprisingly, Real Madrid are the team who have recruited the youngest players on average in the last decade, signing no one over the age of 30 in that time. The average of a Madrid signing was just 22.87 years old. Chelsea, meanwhile recruited, on average, the oldest players (26.71 years old) in the last ten seasons.

PSG have, unsurprisingly, been France’s oldest recruiters in the last decade with a new signing being 25.93 years old on average but ten sides across the big five leagues have been recruiting older players than Paris, including Inter Milan (26.44), Manchester United (26.17), AC Milan (26.14) and Atlético Madrid (26.04).

Nice recruited the youngest players on average of all French clubs and were fourth across the five leagues with an average signing age of 23.73. Madrid, Borussia Mönchengladbach (23.36) and Dortmund (23.57) were the only clubs to sign younger players on average. Lille were a close second in Ligue 1 with a 23.88 average recruitment age while 34.5% of their signings were 21 or under, the most of all clubs across the five leagues.

Surprisingly for a league known for developing young players, Monaco were the only other Ligue 1 club in the top 22 youngest recruiters across Europe. Liverpool were the youngest Premier League recruiter with an average signing age of 24.65 years.

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