Reece James

Club football at Chelsea FC.

Sourced facts, dated and on the record. Squad membership, and his club when a source names one. Nothing invented; we don’t make players up.

At a glance

age
26
sourced with the squad
position
Defence
England
club
Chelsea FC
football-data.org
club tier
1831
ClubElo strength
our board
#148
of 1424 rated players
folded so far
1803′
27 appearances
possession-adjusted defensive actions per 90 (tackles + interceptions + blocks)
5.18
96th percentile of peers

Sourced

squad: England · Defencefootball-data.org · 2026-06-29
club: Chelsea FCfootball-data.org · 2026-06-29

Sourced context, nothing more. It never touches a call.

Our rating · the working

the board →

1925 ±45

his quality rating: club, age and measured output. The board orders by this plus his World Cup form, less a discount for how much we can measure him.

How the number is builtopenclose

1943 full roster Elo (+19 from national-team results)

the ± is how settled the number is, more minutes, tighter band

Tier 2, lineups + results, how rich the evidence is, not just how much

at or near his peak, no projected upside from age

Where he starts (his team’s strength, we refuse to invent what we haven’t measured) plus two fixed nudges make the quality rating above; the last line is what national-team results have added since, taking it to his full roster Elo.

starts at England's strengththe fair club-over-national anchor, every player's starting point: 1893
age curve at 26 (defences' curve)the position's measured peak, no discount either way: +0
defensive actions in club football, possession-adjustedhis percentile among minutes-qualified peers, from club seasons: +31
quality rating · club, age + measured output: 1925
form: national-team results, 27 appearances1803 minutes, weighted by margin, surprise and his match stats, but shared across the XI: +19
full roster Elo · with results: 1943

Where the +31 skill term comes from

Not a reputation, a measurement. We score every shot in the data ourselves and rank him among minutes-qualified peers; a fixed arithmetic turns that rank into points.

measured: 5.18 possession-adjusted defensive actions per 90 (tackles + interceptions + blocks)
his rank: 96th percentile of qualified peers
scored from: recent club seasons (api-football), an individual box-stat proxy, possession-adjusted; volume, not a quality verdict
the arithmetic: 46 pts/σ × z(95.5th) = 46 × 1.70 × 0.4 (position weight) = +31

A forward-only shadow signal, as of 2026-06-23. The skill term comes from our own xG models over the open archive; the rest is earned, recorded per appearance, auditable, never back-filled. It never moves a live call.

The notebook

The lines a beat writer keeps, except every one of ours is read off the ledger above, auditable to the night. Nothing invented.

standing
#148 of 1424 rated players on our board.
vs his seed
The folded nights have added +19 to the number he seeded with, he has outplayed his own prior.

What he’d cost · our estimate

€10m–€40m ≈ €20m

Not a figure from any valuation site; we don’t republish those. Our own model: the level he plays at, what we’ve measured of him, his age and his role. A band, not a point: we can’t see contract length or release clauses, the two biggest real drivers, so we say so.

The workingopenclose

reference feea mid-tier-club, peak-age forward of average measured skill: €8m
club tier 1831the level he plays at, the strongest signal of what a club pays: ×3.17
ageage 26, in the fee-peak window (24–27): ×1.00
defender fee factorstrikers set the market's top; midfield runs close; defence and goal at the record books' discounts: ×0.58
individual skillmeasured 96th percentile of peers: ×1.47
our estimate: ≈ €20m

fee-model v3 priors (panel-anchored, 2026-06), calibrated against our reported fees. The band is roughly two-in-three likely; contract length and release clauses are data we don’t hold. Context only, it never touches a call.

The fee record · sourced

2019-05-15Wigan → Chelseaundisclosed
2018-07-02Chelsea → Wiganloan

Reported moves, dated and attributed (api-football.com), news facts, not a valuation site’s estimates. It never touches a call.

In our coverage · England’s record

v DR CongoSealed
at Panama0–2Called it
v Ghana0–0Missed it
v Croatia4–2Called it

The newsroom’s calls on England. Team-level, never dressed up as a player stat.