He is regularly criticized, but he is the most effective player in the five major European championships in front of goal. And he plays for PSG.
He is not one of the most prolific attackers this season. But, in terms of efficiency, he is well ahead of Harry Kane (18 goals in the Bundesliga), Kylian Mbappé (15 goals in Ligue 1) or Erling Haaland (14 goals in the Premier League). This PSG player is quite simply the most lethal in Europe when he shoots on goal. This statistic could surprise Parisian supporters, who believe that his performances have not quite lived up to expectations since his arrival.
Yet, Randal Kolo Muani is indeed the most effective player in Europe. With 4 goals scored in just 9 shots in Ligue 1, he is the player with the best goals per shots ratio in the five major European championships (0.44). Kolo Muani therefore scores almost half the time he shoots in Ligue 1. He is extremely skillful, since he scored these 4 goals with only 5 shots, and with only 2.5 “expected goals” depending on the position of the shooter, the goalkeeper and the opposing players, the part of the body used).
In comparison, his main competitor in attack, the Portuguese Gonçalo Ramos, scored 3 goals in 22 strikes in League 1, for a yield of 0.14. Barely less than Kylian Mbappé, who has a ratio of 0.17 with 11 goals (excluding penalties) in 63 shots. Ousmane Dembélé, for his part, is one of the most ineffective players in Europe with just one league goal, despite 27 attempts. This statistic is also linked to a characteristic specific to Randal Kolo Muani’s style of play: he is an attacker who shoots little, and only when he is in a very good position. He only has 2.44 shots per 90 minutes on average, compared to 4.53 for Kylian Mbappé for example, who is one of the players who shoots the most in Europe.
Mbappé regularly attempts fairly long shots, with an average shooting distance of 17.2 meters, like Ousmane Dembélé (15.8 meters). And unlike Kolo Muani, whose average is just 10.2 meters. These statistics illustrate a real asset in the game of the former striker of the FC Nantes : the intelligence not to waste actions by attempting strikes doomed to failure, as Ousmane Dembélé sometimes does. But the rarity of his strikes also illustrates his difficulty in creating plenty of opportunities, unlike Kylian Mbappé for example, who hits a lot on goal but maintains good efficiency.
Note that Randal Kolo Muani has played very little in Ligue 1 since the start of the season, only 397 minutes, the equivalent of 4.5 matches out of 15 possible. It was used much more in Champions League, starter in PSG’s first five matches, with a goal on his only shot on target in the competition. After the Blues striker, the identity of the second most effective player in Europe is even more surprising: it is OL’s Irish defender Jake O’Brien, who scored 3 goals in 7 shots for a ratio of 0.43. Three goals from set pieces. He is tied with Mathias Jensen, Danish midfielder from Brentford, who has exactly the same statistics in the Premier League.