The world's best clubs for training young football players have been announced
Portugal's "Benfica" club has once again confirmed its status as the best major center for nurturing professional footballers.
World's top clubs for training young footballers revealed
In the annual ranking of training clubs published by CIES, the Lisbon club took first place with 101.3 points, just like in 2025.
According to the CIES methodology, the position of clubs is determined by how many of their academy graduates currently play in the main teams of professional clubs (taking into account a total of 49 national championships).
At the same time, for a club to be considered to have trained a particular footballer, the player must have spent at least three seasons with the main team of that club between the ages of 15 and 21. Additional points are awarded based on the level of the club where the academy graduate plays, the level of matches they participate in, the time spent on the pitch, and their age (the younger, the better).
According to this calculation method, the number of Benfica graduates reached 93. Currently, only four of them play for the Lisbon team. Another 14 play for clubs in the "big five" championships (England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France), while the rest play for relatively more modest teams.
Notably, Argentina's River Plate and Boca Juniors, which took second and third places, have a number of graduates matching the criteria that is higher than or equal to Benfica's: 94 for River Plate and 93 for Boca Juniors. However, because the graduates of the Argentine giants' academies are fewer in top clubs (10 players each in "big five" teams), they were awarded fewer points — 97.6 and 96.7 points, respectively.