The best creators in football: the live top 10
Goals get the glory, but almost every goal has a quieter author: the player who saw the run, found the gap and put the chance on a plate. This is the live ranking of football's best creators, measured by big chances created per 90, updating as new matches land in the data.
Why this type of player matters
Chances are the currency of football. A team that creates three clear openings a game will win far more than it loses whatever its finishing looks like, because finishing fluctuates and creation compounds. And clear openings rarely happen by accident: they're manufactured by a small number of players who can see and execute the pass that turns possession into a scoring situation.
That player changes everything around him. Strikers score more without improving, because the chances arriving are simply better. Team xG rises without a tactical overhaul. And opponents are forced into a bad choice: press the creator and leave space behind, or sit off him and let him pick passes all day. There's a reason the market prices elite creation alongside elite scoring; it's the same scarcity.
The trap is that creation is usually measured by assists, and assists are a deeply flawed stat. An assist needs a teammate to finish the chance, which means a brilliant creator in a wasteful team posts modest assist numbers while an average passer in a clinical team looks world class. Measuring the chances created, rather than the ones converted, strips the teammates out of the equation.
Why we use these stats
- Big chances created per 90 is the ranking stat. A big chance is a situation the data provider judges a player should reasonably score: the clean one-on-one, the cutback to an unmarked runner, the cross meeting a free header. Counting only these filters out the hopeful ball into the box and isolates genuine chance manufacture.
- Big chances (total) shows the volume behind the rate, so you can see who's doing it week after week rather than in a purple patch.
- Chances created per 90 is all shot-producing passes, big or small. Reading it against the big-chance rate separates two profiles: the surgeon who creates rarely but cleanly, and the volume creator who peppers the box and lets probability work.
- Assists are included as the familiar reference point, and precisely so you can see how they mislead: players here with modest assist tallies but elite big-chance numbers are being let down by their finishers, not their passing. That's a buying signal, not a weakness.
How the ranking works
The pool is every outfield player across 20 top-flight leagues; creators come from everywhere, and the table is free to surface full backs and deep midfielders alongside the classic number tens. The window is always the last 12 months of league football. To qualify, a player needs at least 900 league minutes and 8 big chances created, so a single deadly month doesn't outrank sustained supply. Qualified players are ranked by big chances created per 90. A player new to the top ten carries a green New tag for his first week.
The live top 10
| Player | Club | Big chances | Big ch. /90 | Chances /90 | Assists | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zlatko Tripic | Viking · 33 | 29 | 1.3 | 3.68 | 23 |
| 2 | Michael Olise | FC Bayern München · 24 | 28 | 1.13 | 2.51 | 19 |
| 3 | Lionel Messi | Inter Miami · 39 | 34 | 1.06 | 2.64 | 24 |
| 4 | Federico Dimarco | Inter · 28 | 30 | 0.99 | 2.64 | 17 |
| 5 | Joey Veerman | Borussia Dortmund · 27 | 25 | 0.99 | 2.8 | 12 |
| 6 | Lamine Yamal | FC Barcelona · 19 | 24 | 0.99 | 2.64 | 9 |
| 7 | Bruno Fernandes | Manchester United · 31 | 32 | 0.97 | 3.47 | 21 |
| 8 | Aral Şimşir | Trabzonspor · 24 | 20 | 0.97 | 1.99 | 11 |
| 9 | James Rodríguez | Minnesota United · 35 | 10 | 0.96 | 1.82 | 4 |
| 10 | Evander | Cincinnati · 28 | 26 | 0.92 | 2.7 | 16 |
How to read it
Check the gap between assists and big chances first: a big spread means the creator is better than his teammates' finishing makes him look, and his assist numbers will catch up wherever the finishing improves. Then look at the two rate columns together: a high big-chance rate on a modest overall chance rate is a player who only deals in quality, while high volume on both is a player his whole team plays through. As ever, team context inflates raw counting stats, which is why every number here appears as a percentile against the player's position on his FDscout profile; why percentiles beat raw numbers is covered separately.
Who should want these players
Any team that generates possession but not penetration: plenty of sides dominate the ball for seventy minutes and produce three shots from range, and this is the exact profile that fixes it. Teams with a clinical striker and nothing behind him get the fastest payoff of all, because elite creation plus elite finishing multiply each other. And for recruitment departments, the big-chances-versus-assists gap is one of the most reliable market inefficiencies in football: players are still priced substantially on assists, and assists still depend on someone else scoring.
Click any name for the full FDscout dossier: percentile radar, role scores including the Final Ball Playmaker index, traits like Big chance creator, and season-by-season breakdowns. The role definitions live in the role library, and every stat on this page is explained in the glossary.