PSG value Bradley Barcola at north of £116m – but how much is he really worth? – The Athletic

With each passing summer, the football world grows more surprised by jumps in transfer fees.

Elliot Anderson’s £116million move from Nottingham Forest to Manchester City is this summer’s yardstick, with The Athletic reporting this week that Paris Saint-Germain believe their winger Bradley Barcola should be valued at a much higher price.

PSG do not feel the need to sell the 23-year-old after Milan signed striker Goncalo Ramos from them for a club-record fee (in the region of €70m — £60m; $80m). Barcola, however, has been reluctant to extend a contract that has two years left on it as he desires more starts than he’s been getting at the back-to-back European champions. But if he were to push for a move, the France international winger would not be short of suitors. Arsenal’s admiration is known, while Liverpool’s interest was reported in mid-June.

So, is Barcola worth more than the £116million City are paying for Anderson?

Get free access to the most comprehensive World Cup coverage in The Athletic app

From a pure financial perspective on player values, The Athletic has enlisted the help of Twenty First Group (TFG), a sports intelligence firm which includes high-profile clubs, leagues and more among its client base.

Note that:

• ‘Value’ does not equate to ‘price’.
• What Twenty First Group values a player at may differ materially from their projected price.
• Value is driven by intrinsic matters, agnostic of market factors — age, position and experience, to name just three.
• A player’s price incorporates aspects which impact what their existing club could expect to receive for them in a given transaction — think remaining contract length, wealth of the buyer, wealth of the sellers, and so on.
• Value, not price, has been used here.

In Barcola’s case, TFG has valued him at £100million for any buying Premier League club, considering he is a top talent with two or more years left on his contract, and can play off both flanks and up front. This figure does not include market factors that could dictate an eventual price, such as the real-time wants and needs of whoever is doing the buying and selling, which could see PSG demand much more, but it helps put us in the ballpark.

Is this the best France team ever?

Tom Williams

When viewed through the lens of the most expensive wingers to sign for Premier League clubs (Jack Grealish for £100million in 2021, Antony for £82m in 2022, Jadon Sancho for £73m in 2021, Nicolas Pepe for £72m in 2019 and Bryan Mbeumo for £71m last year), TFG’s valuation does not feel out of place.

Looking back to last summer, Liverpool bought attackers Florian Wirtz for €136.3million (£116.8m/$156.1m at current rates) and Alexander Isak in a deal worth up to £130m ($173.6m at the present rate).

Nobody can say whether a player is worth their transfer fee until they have played for their new club, but opinions before then will come from that individual’s footballing history, and Barcola’s is interesting.

Before the World Cup kicked off last month, some may have viewed Barcola as a backup option for both PSG and France, but that is a narrow view of a player who is part of the best attacking forces in club and international football.

In his three seasons at PSG, he made 26 starts in 39 appearances in 2023-24, then 44 in 58 and 35 in 48.

The 2024-25 campaign was his strongest, with 21 goals and 18 assists, but increasingly, discussions around Barcola have centred around inconsistencies as a finisher. Some of his biggest misses have come in the biggest games, too. He could have ended Arsenal’s Champions League hopes late in a semi-final first leg in 2025, but dragged a tame effort wide after nice link-up play.

His missed effort against Sweden in the World Cup this week, after baiting two defenders, also had flashes of a blown opportunity in the Champions League final win over Inter last year.

But Barcola tends to find the net as often as he should over the course of a season. He scored 11 league goals from an expected goals tally of 10.9 in 2025-26, and 14 from an xG of 13.6 the season before.

How the numbers come about is more important than the raw data, though.

Barcola may not be as deadly as PSG team-mates Ousmane Dembele, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Desire Doue, but he has an electricity in his play that is refreshing in a football climate where wingers head towards their own goal more often.

Some trends that emerge with his goals are being in the right place at the right time, or using his pace to run in behind, like he did to double France’s group-stage lead against Senegal in their first World Cup group game. There is thought behind the runs he makes. Below, you can see he recognises the opportunity to sprint into space as soon as Adrien Rabiot receives the ball, but also a nice drop of the shoulder to pull a defender out of position to burst past him in the sequence’s second example (frame four onwards).

There are questions over whether he would be granted as much room to exploit by Premier League defences, but that speed may also help to create more chances from breakaways.

In this year’s Champions League final, Barcola came off the bench and threatened Arsenal with two bursts in behind William Saliba late on. Liverpool are more accustomed to playing on the break, scoring seven league goals from fast breaks last season compared to Arsenal’s four, so adding Barcola to these situations would benefit both teams.

While it is often his dribbling that takes the breath away, Barcola is also capable of special strikes. He scored twice from outside the box in a 2-0 win against Lens early last season, but a different pair of goals stood out more.

Quizzed about his inconsistent finishing before facing Chelsea in the Champions League’s round of 16 in March, Barcola was blasé in front of the press, then did his talking on the pitch. One touch, and a bang with his left foot arrowing the ball into the roof of the net put PSG 1-0 up. A week later, one touch with his left foot, and a bang with his right, and PSG led 2-0 on the night (en route to an 8-2 aggregate win).

As an Arsenal writer, that second goal conjured flashbacks of a similar finish against Chelsea, this one from Thierry Henry (both below).

While Barcola’s finishing levels out with expectations each season, maybe scoring harder chances to make up for the easier ones he has missed, there are other interesting trends about his output.

In his last season at Lyon and first one with PSG, looking at a 10-game rolling average, the winger overperformed his xG most of the time. In the past two years, when PSG have completed the Ligue 1 and Champions League double twice, Barcola tends to overperform his xG in the first half of a season and underperform during the second.

That factors into some of his memorable misses coming in the latter stages of the Champions League, but also shows that those spurned chances should not define him.

The majority of forwards fluctuate in their stats, and that is true in Barcola’s assist numbers from the past two seasons.

He created two chances per 90 minutes in Ligue 1 in each, but the volatility was shown in the contrast between his expected assists (xA) and actual assists. In 2024-25, his xA of 5.9 resulted in 10 league assists, but last term, 4.5 xA only earned him one assist in the French top flight.

For the method behind the numbers, there does need to be consideration for the difference in playing style between PSG and most teams.

Luis Enrique has built the most fluid attacking unit in club football, with wingers doubling on one flank and players across the team given licence to roam as long as they are in a position to press well when possession is lost.

With that, the chances and assists Barcola creates rarely come from crosses. In fact, last season in Ligue 1, he completed just five crosses (0.3 per 90). By comparison, Bukayo Saka clocked up 40 at Arsenal (1.6 per 90) and Mohamed Salah had 20 for Liverpool (0.45 per 90). The lack of crossing from Barcola may not be down to a lack of ability, as seen with his crossed assist for Doue against Norway on matchday three at the World Cup, but may be an area that needs to be developed.

As for the assists Barcola has provided in recent seasons, there will be no surprise that his blistering pace plays a big role, alongside a willingness to take on his man.

For a blend of these two attributes, below are two examples of moments that are almost second nature: using his first touch to beat a defender (which he does to create PSG’s first goal in a 4-2 comeback win against Manchester City) and then another run behind into space.

Both these assists were for Dembele, and these square passes across the box are often how the pair combine for goals.

Other players will elicit different combinations. For example, everybody will remember Senny Mayulu’s goal in the 2025 Champions League final for his amazing smile while celebrating, but the one-two between him and Barcola had led to an almost identical goal against Strasbourg earlier that season (both below).

All these examples are from 2024-25, but if you have a moment to look at the four Champions League assists Barcola made last season, they are all very similar.

That understanding that makes football look simple may not be as eye-catching as the ball-rolls, nutmegs and dummies, but can sometimes be more effective.

Barcola is 24 the day after the summer transfer window shuts in early September and more efficiency is what clubs will hope he brings into next season.

There is no doubt over his talent, but does he need to be the man out wide as opposed to one of a group to show that on a more consistent basis than he did last year? He has already shown at the World Cup that he can force himself into a starting XI among the world’s best, after beginning the tournament on the bench.

Some will scoff at PSG’s valuation being in excess of the £116million agreed for Anderson, but in the current market it feels fair. The real question is how far north of what City are paying Forest does that figure go?

Whoever goes for Barcola — if anyone decides to — it will take a massive effort to seal a deal. But as shown above, he could be worth it.