Riccardo Calafiori's brilliance still isn't being recognised and it's really frustrating

While winning the Premier League title has done wonders for certain Arsenal players' reputations, it's yet to embolden the wider football world into admiring and appreciating the excellence of Riccardo Calafiori.

Key members of Mikel Arteta's project have been consistently overlooked in recent years, with the Gunners' 'bottlers' tag seemingly weighing them down individually. However, finally being crowned Premier League champions seems to have changed that.

The Athletic released their latest list of their top 50 current Premier League players on Wednesday morning. Eight Arsenal players feature, with five making the top ten.

While Calafiori did make the cut, Gunners supporters will be shocked by just how low down the Athletic have placed the magnificent Italian.

Riccardo Calafiori's ranking is a joke

Staggeringly, the Athletic have ranked Calafiori 38th. While being the 38th-best player in the best league in the world sounds like a good thing on paper, it's difficult to adopt this outlook when scouring the list and seeing some of the players ranked ahead of the left-back.

Among those the Athletic think are better players than Calafiori include:

Florian Wirtz - Certainly a talented individual but yet to really impose himself on a league which looks too physical for him.
Granit Xhaka - An exceptional passer but at his age, surely he can't be deemed better than one of the most complete players in the league?
Ismaila Sarr - A player whose career highlights revolve around a good run of form in the Conference League, and who is so exceptionally limited in possession that he'd be a liability in 90% of teams.
Alexis Mac Allister - A neat midfielder who has massively fallen off over the last 12 months.
Phil Foden - A player who is constantly glorified as the messiah of English football, but has done very little in recent seasons in reality.
Emi Martinez - A superb shot-stopper on his day, but whose other attributes leave a lot to desire and who is gradually declining as he approaches his late 30s.

There are several others ranked above Calafiori whose position above the former Bologna man is contentious, but not egregious like those mentioned above.

Those outside of the Arsenal sphere clearly don't recognise just how good the player is. His free-roaming spirit makes him one of the most tactically unique players in the league, while this unpredictable element to his game significantly elevates the level of the Gunners' attack.

He can do almost anything on a football pitch. An outstanding passer, he breaks lines with ease when on the ball deep inside his own defensive third or in the middle third. An impressive carrier, he drives into space with the ball when he sees fit. A technically supreme attacker, he makes things happen with brilliant moments of intuition when in and around the opposition's box.

Defensively, there are minor question marks around his ability to deal with the trickiest and fastest wingers on the planet. However, he's dominant in the air, great at making anticipatory blocks and defends excellently when his team has their backs against the wall.

The stats back up just how influential Calafiori is. Last season, he ranked in the 95th percentile for expected goals per 90, the 99th percentile for shots, the 89th percentile for shots on target, the 73rd percentile for pass accuracy, the 92nd percentile for successful dribble percentage, the 87th percentile for aerial duels won, the 87th percentile for touches in the opposition box and the 87th percentile for (not) being dribbled past.

He's a true unicorn of a player, with almost nobody else in football able to play the exact role he fulfils in this Arsenal team, and it's time more people start recognising this.

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