World Cup 2018: Top 20 centre-backs in the tournament

20. Salif Sane

Salif Sane

Part of a giant center-back partnership with Kalidou Koulibaly (spoiler alert!), the 6’4 Sane just had a statistically outstanding season for Hannover 96. In fact, the 27-year-old finished with the 8th highest player rating in the Bundesliga. Perhaps even more impressively, the Senegalese won five ‘Man of the Match’ awards- tied for third-most among defenders in the Top 5 European league. As suggested by his height, Sane is one of the most aerially dominant players in the World. The Senegalese won 5.7 aerial duels per game, 1st in the Bundesliga and tied for 5th in the Top five European league. Sane also used this ability to help out his team’s (mediocre) attackers by scoring four goals for Hannover.

What is more surprising is Sane’s pace, positioning, technique, and passing, all of which are excellent. The Senegalese managed to win 0.8 offsides per game, which ranked eighth in the Bundesliga. He also managed to bail out his fellow defenders with an outstanding 7.3 clearances per game- top in the German league. The defender’s ball distribution is also a major strength as he managed to make 4.2 successful long balls per game. Considering all these excellent statistics, Sane’s tackle and interception numbers (both 1.8 per game) seem ordinary but are still above average. Despite all these incredibly impressive statistics, the recent Schalke signing is only ranked 20th because of his lack of international experience (only 14 caps and none at a major international tournament). Hopefully, those concerns will be removed after the World Cup.

19. John Stones

England Media Access - 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia

The second English centre-back to appear on these rankings, John Stones managed to vindicate Pep Guardiola’s faith in him last season. After a tough first season with Manchester City, Stones has managed to establish himself as one of the best centre-backs in the Premier League. Stones’ strongest attribute (and the reason Guardiola made him one of his first signing) is his passing. The Englishman had a pass success percentage of 95.8%, which would have ranked highest among all Premier League players if he had played enough games to qualify for WhoScored’s list. He had such a high pass percentage despite making 69.2 average passes per game- 13th in the Premier League. Such passing performances also helped Stones achieved an average rating of 6.89. Yet, the Englishman was even better in the Champions League with an average rating of 7.87. This ranked 11th in the European Competition, again mostly due to the 24 year old’s excellent passing. In fact, Stones made an average of 111.6 passes per game- the type of number not seen in the Champions League since the prime of Xavi. After all, it was with good reason that Rio Ferdinand said that the City defender has potential “to become world class”.

What prevents Stones from being consistently “world class” now (thus higher in these rankings) is his defensive play (along with his frequent injuries this season). The Manchester City defender only made 0.8 tackles and 1.1 interceptions per game for the Citizens. While this is partially due to the fact that City did very little defending last season, his 66.7% success rate with tackles was also unimpressive-suggesting a fundamental problem with his game. Thankfully for England, one of Stones’ partners in central defence will likely be Maguire- whose skills complement that of the Manchester City defender.