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Pace has always been an extremely potent weapon in any footballer’s armoury, so it’s always interesting when scientific analysis shows you who the fastest in a particular season are, especially when it concerns a club of the ilk of Barcelona
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In the current 2016/17 season, the top speed clocked by any Barcelona player is 34.83 km/h. Neymar Jr. created the record in one of his lightning fast sprints against Sporting Gijon. The second closest will surprise you... here’s the full list
1. Neymar Jr.: 34.83 km/h
The Brazilian is by far the fastest man in the squad
2. Jeremy Mathieu: 34.25 km/h
Surprisingly, the Frenchman (who also moonlights as a left-back) is rapid on his feet!
3. Aleix Vidal: 33.8 km/h
The right back rounds up the top three!
4. Javier Mascherano: 33.71 km/h
This is a massive surprise – faster than 15 other players? Now you know how he recovers to make those game saving tackles all the time.
5. Jordi Alba: 33.67 km/h
6. Sergio Busquets: 33.64 km/h
7. Gerard Pique: 33.52 km/h
8. Sergi Roberto: 33.51 km/h
9. Paco Alcacer: 33.4 km/h
10. Samuel Umtiti: 33.01 km/h
11. Luis Suarez: 32.86 km/h
12. Andre Gomes: 32.73 km/h
13. Lionel Messi: 32.27 km/h
Now, this has come out of the blue! But numbers don’t lie!
14. Lucas Digne: 32.21 km/h
15. Denis Suarez: 32.18 km/h
16. Arda Turan: 31.87 km/h
17. Rafinha Alcantara: 31.76 km/h
18. Andres Iniesta: 31.62 km/h
19. Ivan Rakitic: 30.66 km/h
While Luis Suarez’s exclusion from the top rung can be explained by the fact that he rarely gets into his full strides – his game is dominated by short sprints, Leo Messi’s 13th rank comes as a major surprise.
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Another surprise is the fact that the lackadaisical Sergio Busquets is considerably faster than any of his midfield colleagues – with Ivan Rakitic and Andres Iniesta making up the absolute bottom.
As ever, this scientific approach to pace merely shows the top speed and not the average speed. And it certainly doesn’t show how fast a person runs with the ball. I’m sure Lionel Messi would be right up there if that was the parameter on which we had measured the footballers’ speed.
