Best Alternatives to Riyad Mahrez

Playing Style Analysis

Mahrez remains one of football's most elegant anachronisms—a winger built on craft and cunning rather than pace and power, still threading passes that others don't even see. His key pass rate of 3.49 per 90 places him in the top 5% of attackers in the Pro League, which tells you everything about where his value actually lives. The counterintuitive read here is his goals tally: 0.20 per 90 looks underwhelming, but Mahrez is functioning less as a finisher and more as a creative hub, generating 0.35 assists per 90 while touching the ball with surprising frequency for a wide attacker. The three closest DNA matches to Riyad Mahrez:

• Raheem Sterling(84% match) — Sterling carries the unmistakable fingerprints of a player who has rebuilt his game around intelligence rather than raw explosiveness—a wily, technically refined attacker operating at a career crossroads. His pass accuracy sits in the top 5% of Premier League forwards, a figure that speaks to a man who has quietly become a connector as much as a finisher.
• Bertrand Traoré(83% match) — A Forward. Statistically, he stands out as naturally left-footed and a capable chance creator (1.1 key passes/90).
• Florian Thauvin(82% match) — A Inside Forward. Statistically, he stands out as naturally left-footed, an elite creator (2.9 key passes/90), a constant goal threat (2.6 shots/90), a proven goalscorer (0.41 goals/90), a reliable supplier (0.23 assists/90) and creates high-quality scoring opportunities (0.60 big chances/90).

Similarity uses per-90 performance across playing-style dimensions. How Player DNA matching works →