On the 15th of April PSV became Dutch champions for the 24th time in club history, while Club Brugge managed to become champion in the Belgian Jupiler Pro League for the 15th time, since their foundation in 1891, on the 13th of May. We used our SciSkill Index to highlight the eleven players of both clubs who played most frequent during the 2017-2018 campaign.
PSV Eindhoven
The players who were most frequently used by Dutch champion are a mix between six Dutch players (whereof both Hendrix and Bergwijn from their own youth academy) and five foreigners. Especially the amount of three players from South-Amercia catches the eye. Among these three is Hirving Lozano who signed for the club last summer for a reported fee of eight million euros. The name of Lozano was already linked to the club from Eindhoven several times and it may be clear that he absolutely nealed it in his starting season with 17 goals and 11 assists in 29 games. With a SciSkill of 91.4 he is currently the number two of the Eredivsie in terms of impact on the teamresult. With Luuk de Jong on the 1st and PSV’s captain Marco van Ginkel on the 3th place, the top three of the Eredivisie completely exists out of PSV players.
After selling five key players from the 2016-2017 season (Locadia (in winter 2018), Pröpper, Moreno, Willems and Guardado) PSV managed to fill these gaps with youth products and quality signing Hirving Lozano (from CF Pachuca). This can be seen as some excellent squad management by the technical board of the club.
Best eleven
PSV started the season with the strongest first eleven based on the SciSkill. With an average of 81.0. PSV was the firm favorite to become Champion. During the season the average SciSkill from PSV increased to an average SciSkill of 84.0. Only Ajax managed to get a best eleven average SciSkill close to PSV. The best eleven SciSkill of Ajax at the end of the season is 80.3.
Highest development
In terms of development AZ was the team with the highest average development over the past season. The team full of youngsters developed from an average best eleven SciSkill of 66.4 by the beginning of the season to an average best eleven SciSkill off 74.1 at the end of the season. Other clubs who made a huge average SciSkill development are ADO den Haag and NAC Breda.
Club Brugge
The 2017-2018 selection of head coach Ivan Leko played almost the entire season in a 3-5-2 formation. After the departure of Belgium’s 2016 player of the year Jose Izquierdo (to Brighton & Hove Albion) last summer, Club Brugge’s captain Ruud Vormer became his successor in February this year.
In the meantime Hans Vanaken is the player with Club Brugge’s highest SciSkill with a score of 83.5. With this score he seems to be ready for the next step in his career, based on his SciSkill he should be able to adopt to a mid-table club in a big-5 league.
With Wesley (21), Cools (21) and Limbombe (23) the team consists of some very talented players too. Although they already made their impact, their Potential scores of respectively 107, 106 and 98 suggests that the future looks even brighter for them and Club Brugge.
A noteworthy incoming transfer at the beginning of this season was that of Marvelous Nakamba from Vitesse. Nakamba was an important player on Club Brugge’s midfield the entire year. He played a total of 44 games and 3.476 minutes in both the competition and cups. Nakamba managed to increase his SciSkill from 74 at the beginning of the season to a SciSkill of 80 at the end of the season.
