Bellingham, Kane joined by new names among top 10 English players abroad | OneFootball

Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane head the ten highest-graded English players abroad but the Three Lions stars are joined by two wingers you might not be familiar with.

Six of Thomas Tuchel’s current England squad ply their trade in Europe – though only three of those players make this top ten based on their Gradient Sports grades.

What are these grades, you ask? Gradient’s grades, on a scale of 0-100, evaluate player performance based on the execution of the skills most important to their position.

Based on their overall grade, here are the top ten English players currently playing in the major European leagues outside the Premier League.

10) Ethan Nwaneri (Borussia Dortmund) – 74.9 Still a teenager – remember, he was barely out of the womb when he made his Premier League debut – Nwaneri has played as a 10 in his three appearances so far for Dortmund, forcing an own goal on his Bundesliga debut. He started the two games that followed and looks set for plenty of opportunities following the ACL injury suffered by fellow summer signing Giannis Konstantelias.

9) Anthony Gordon (Barcelona) – 75.6 Four assists in six games makes for a solid start from Gordon at Barcelona, where he’s already recognised that we’re wasting our time trying to beat Spain at their own game. Barca are pretty chuffed with him, apparently.

8) Harry Winks (Cagliari) – 75.7 Cagliari was as far as Winks could get from Leicester this summer and he appears to be relishing his escape, just scraping into the top 20 per cent of the 523 midfielders in Europe’s top five leagues. The 30-year-old has 10 England caps to his name, the last coming almost six years ago.

7) Jay Robinson (Monza) – 77.3 Robinson is on loan at the the Serie A new boys from Southampton. The 19-year-old winger made four Premier League appearances for the Saints and 23 in the Championship last term before heading off to Italy, where he’s scored once in four appearances so far while making the top 20 highest-graded forwards in Serie A.

6) Trent Alexander-Arnold (Real Madrid) – 78.5 Alexander-Arnold is back in the Tuchel’s thinking but remained on the bench against Spain as he continues to wait for his first international appearance since June 2025. “We needed Jarell Quansah’s speed and ability to think as a central defender,” explained the England boss, offering no encouragement whatsoever to Trent, who has never had a centre-back’s thought in his life. He is the 10th-highest graded defender in La Liga, though, with the second-highest crossing grade.

5) Eric Dier (Monaco) – 78.6 The 32-year-old, one cap short of the half-century since his last England appearance at the 2022 World Cup, is the fifth-highest graded of all England defenders this season, with two – Harry Maguire and Coventry’s Bobby Thomas – of the four above him also not included in Tuchel’s squad.

4) Samuel Amo-Ameyaw (Strasbourg) – 78.9 The 20-year-old Hackney-born winger was once the youngest player to play in the Premier League for Southampton but, these days, he is lighting up Ligue 1, where he is graded in the top 10 among forwards for shooting, crossing, control and carrying. If the England squad was grade-based, he would be in it. Like this fella…

3) Tyler Morton (Lyon) – 83.1 The Lyon midfielder’s passing caught the Gradient analysts’ eyes last season and he has continued in a similar vein this term. Morton has the best ball control grade of 94 midfielders in Ligue 1 and is seventh-best for both passing and crossing. No wonder Liverpool are wondering if they’ve made a mistake.

2) Harry Kane (Bayern Munich) – 84.4 Kane was the highest-graded of all players in Europe’s top five leagues last season with an overall grade of 95.0 while, so far this term, the England captain is only the seventh-highest graded forward in the Bundesliga. Three goals in four games shows the massive fraud has been found out.

1) Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid) – 89.1 The Real star is the highest-graded Englishman across all five big European leagues, including the Premier League, and the seventh highest of all players across those competitions. Bellingham is the highest-graded midfielder in La Liga with three goals and two assists in seven games so far under Jose Mourinho.