Scoring Stats - Europe's most important players

A few months ago - just before his untimely suspension before the Milan derby with Inter - it became known that Zlatan Ibrahimovic had either scored or assisted on an astonishing 45+ percent of all AC Milan's Serie A goals.

Which got me asking which players were the most crucial to their club's fortunes throughout the course of season 2010-2011. Such estimates had to be quantifiable, so Scoring Stats (goals plus assists) became a measuring stick for players in the four major leagues throughout Europe.

Almost immediately, there were nuances to such plain numbers - a player's role defined their total. Some, like Dimitar Berbatov or Freiburg's Papiss Demba Cisse acted chiefly as "finishers", while others like Everton's Leighton Baines or Kaiserslauten's Christan Tiffert performed the role mainly as providers.

So interesting was this matrix that they became something of a minor obsession! The results for all of Europe (and all four English Leagues) can be found on the Balanced Sports Scoring Stats page. Once again Cristiano Ronaldo agonizingly trails Lionel Messi - although he contributed more goals, Messi's contribution to Barcelona's scoring ranked significantly higher than that of the Madridista. While Ronaldo does all he can to be the world's best (and Messi is), they are both surrounded by remarkable talents and as such it's curious to find their clubs so reliant upon them.

The Premier League proved much less reliant on one player than the other three major leagues in Europe. In England, the average team leader in Scoring Stats contributed to only 31.9% of his team's goals. In Germany it was higher still at 35% while Italy was higher still at 35.9%. Spain, however, mostly due to the efforts of those two marvellous players (and Villarreal's Giuseppe Rossi) find one player contributing much more to team scoring - a whopping 37.3%. This only serves to show how extraordinary the efforts of players like Bologna's Marco Di Vaio were, who managed a goal or assist in a phenomenal 60% (!) of his team's scores this year.

Here, in order of percentage input to their team's scoring, are the ten most irreplaceable players in Europe:

League	Player	Team	Games	Goals	Assists	Total	Team Goals	%
Serie A	M. Di Vaio	Bologna	39	19	2	21	35	0.600
Bundesliga	T. Gekas	Frankfurt	31 (3)	16	2	18	31	0.581
Serie A	E. Cavani	Napoli	32 (3)	26	6	32	59	0.542
Serie A	A. Di Natale	Udinese	35 (1)	28	7	35	65	0.538
Bundesliga	P. D. Cisse	Freiburg	32	22	0	22	41	0.537
La Liga	L. Messi	Barcelona	31 (2)	31	18	49	95	0.516
La Liga	C. Ronaldo	Real Madrid	32 (2)	40	10	50	102	0.490
Serie A	S. Eto'o	Inter Milan	35	21	9	30	69	0.435
EPL	C. Tevez	Man. City	30 (1)	20	6	26	60	0.433
La Liga	G. Rossi	Villarreal	35 (1)	18	5	23	54	0.426

You can see who led each team in Europe at Balanced Sports' Scoring Stats page.

Marco Di Vaio image courtesy: www.footballitaliano.com, image of Leighton Baines courtesy: sportydesktops.com