Every year, the CIES Football Observatory release an end of season review of transfer spending and player market value. While the top two remain unchanged, there's a new number three with Luis Suarez rocketing from 20th most valuable football player in the world to unseat countryman Edinson Cavani near the top of the list, with Cavani dropping to ninth after a disappointing season with PSG.
Lionel Messi may have had a down year by his lofty standards, but he still unsurprisingly ranks as the world's most valuable player. Were he to be sold his value would be expected to be between £161.5-187.6M, though one imagines Barcelona wouldn't agree to his sale even if someone were to put that much money up for him. Ronaldo again came second with a value of around £85-99M.
While Ronaldo trails Messi by a rather large margin, in part due to being three years older, Suarez is close on the Portuguese attacker's tail and rated as worth between £79-92M. Eden Hazard is worth about £20M less than him in the £61-71M range, with Neymar, Paul Pogba, and Gareth Bale following at around £50M. Rather intriguingly, Pogba is believed to have a release clause of around £40M, less than his current value.
Gareth Bale, on the other hand, is worth less than Madrid paid Tottenham for him last summer—confirming the widespread belief that the Spanish giants overpaid relative his value as a football player to convince Spurs to sell. Mesut Ozil and Cavani follow, with Mario Gotze and Diego Costa tied for tenth most valuable player in football.
Further down, Liverpool have two names in the top twenty who weren't there last year in Raheem Sterling and Daniel Sturridge. His prodigious talent combined with the fact he's still a teenager means Sterling is rated the world's 15th most valuable player, worth between £31-36M, while Sturridge is worth £29-34M. Sterling was signed from QPR for an initial fee of £600k rising to £5M with potential add-ons. Sturridge cost Liverpool £12M from Chelsea.