Mathieu Debuchy also made the cut, however, so read into that what you will.
Luis Suarez’s mantelpiece must be struggling under the weight of all the individual accolades he has collected in the last number of weeks, but he’ll have to make room for one more after he emerged as Player of the Season on the football stats site WhoScored.com.
Football aficionados are probably well aware of the highly respected and popular site as it is, but for those who aren’t, they regularly rate individual performances based on a collection of a number of performance stats, including everything from goals scored to chances created, passing completion percentages and so on.
Suarez ended up with an individual score of 8.43, the highest rated of all individual players in the top five leagues to have made 20+ appearances in the season just gone, finishing just ahead of Lionel Messi, who also posted a score of 8.4 despite a fairly mediocre season by his ridiculously high standards.
Suarez and Messi were joined by Liverpool team-mate Steven Gerrard in the WhoScored.com Highest Rated European XI, two of three Premier League representatives alongside Newcastle’s Mathieu Debuchy, with four from La Liga (including Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo), three from Serie A and one apiece from the Bundesliga and Ligue 1.
You can see a more detailed breakdown of how the respective players earned a spot in the side on the WhoScored website
here but if you disagree with any of their selections, be warned that they do have A LOT of statistical information to justify the inclusion of each and every member of the XI, so your argument might have to start with a 'Stats? Schmats' opening line of debate.
