Celtic rank highly among Europe's elite as squad is valued; Ibrox rivals nowhere to be seen

By Hamish Carton

March 22, 2023

Celtic have ranked highly among Europe’s elite after the Hoops squad was valued by the CIES Football Observatory.

Ange Postecoglou has built an impressive collection of players at Celtic Park since taking on the job nearly two years ago.

The vast majority of his signings will be sold on at some stage for a healthy profit, with Josip Juranovic and Giorgos Giakoumakis the first to leave the club in January.

CIES – a research group within the International Centre for Sports Studies – specialise in the statistical analysis of football.

In a recent post they have named the top 100 clubs on the planet according to “the estimated value of transfer rights held on players in the squad.”

They define this as “players in the squad, on loan to other teams or sold with a sell-on percentage”.

They have valued Celtic at €169million, for a total of 32 players.

This means the average Celtic player is worth around €5.3million, or £4.7million.

It puts Celtic at number 64 in their top 100, and in tenth for teams out with Europe’s top five leagues. (England, Germany, Spain, Italy, France)

Ahead of us in the latter table are the likes of Ajax (1), Benfica (2), Porto (3) and Red Bull Salzburg (6).

These are all clubs with similar statures to us on the European stage. There is no reason at all why we can’t be competing with them and rising even further up the table.

Interestingly enough, there are no other Scottish sides included in CIES’s top 100 – with our Ibrox rivals Rangers nowhere to be seen.

It is evidence, from a neutral source, that we have by far the most valuable squad in Scotland.

Players are likely to depart Celtic Park this summer, like they did in January, but we all have immense faith in Ange to spend the money wisely to replace them.

Who knows how high we’ll rank the next time CIES do a similar study.

In other news, the UEFA Champions League is changing for Celtic in 2024