By Niloufar Momeni
For the third year in a row, here at Football Tribe Asia, we will track 100 Asian football players playing in the European continent. From Japan, South Korea and North Korea and China, all the way to Iran, Jordan, and Uzbekistan, Asian players have moved to Europe to advance their football career at football hubs of Europe.
During the Summer transfer, fifteen Asian players were either loaned out or were demoted to second-tier European leagues, which are not tracked in our tracking system.
At the same time, seven Asian players moved to top European leagues during the Summer transfer period. Footballers also moved to European leagues such as Poland, Greece, and Austria, but these are not considered the elite European leagues.
At Football Tribe Asia, we only focused on performances of 47 Asian players who currently play in top European leagues of England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, Russia and Portugal as per UEFA Coefficient ranking of top leagues.
The criteria are to select players who play in the top division of leagues above.
Tracking all 47 players, in August – the first month of the football season – here are top five Asian players in elite football leagues based on performance and ratings. Players’ ranking includes considerations such as the number of goals scored, assists, their Pass Accuracy Ratio (percent) and their ratings*.
Sorted by the highest Rating.
*Source of Ratings: whoscored.com