Nicolas Pépé

Club football at Villarreal CF.

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
30
sourced with the squad
position
Offence
Ivory Coast
club
Villarreal CF
football-data.org
club tier
1759
ClubElo strength
our board
#407
of 1424 rated players
folded so far
2721′
43 appearances
npxG per 90
0.27
85th percentile of peers

On the pitch

Goals for Ivory Coast, on the record and counted.

goals
2
assists
0

goals and assists from our captured match events · caps and minutes from the appearance record

Sourced

squad: Ivory Coast · Offencefootball-data.org · 2026-06-29
club: Villarreal CFfootball-data.org · 2026-06-29

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

Our rating · the working

the board →

1809 ±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

1844 full roster Elo (+35 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 Ivory Coast's strengththe fair club-over-national anchor, every player's starting point: 1767
age curve at 30 (offences' curve)measured from the open archive by our own study (defenders: the published literature's shape), never fitted to our calls: -7
attacking output in club football, our xG modelhis percentile among minutes-qualified peers, from club seasons: +48
quality rating · club, age + measured output: 1809
form: national-team results, 43 appearances2721 minutes, weighted by margin, surprise and his match stats, but shared across the XI: +35
full roster Elo · with results: 1844

Where the +48 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: 0.27 npxG per 90
his rank: 85th percentile of qualified peers
scored from: recent club seasons, every shot scored by our own xG model
the arithmetic: 46 pts/σ × z(85.2th) = 46 × 1.05 = +48

A forward-only shadow signal, as of 2026-06-25. 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
#407 of 1424 rated players on our board.
vs his seed
The folded nights have added +35 to the number he seeded with, he has outplayed his own prior.

What he’d cost · our estimate

€7.7m–€30m ≈ €15m

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 1759the level he plays at, the strongest signal of what a club pays: ×2.37
ageage 30, past the fee-peak, value falls ~18% a year: ×0.55
attacker fee factorstrikers set the market's top; midfield runs close; defence and goal at the record books' discounts: ×1.00
individual skillmeasured 85th percentile of peers: ×1.53
our estimate: ≈ €15m

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

The market’s last public word: €80m (2019-08). Our estimate today: ≈ €15m. The gap is evidence, many of them, together, recalibrate our model; no single one rewrites him.

our read: richly priced , we rate him 81% below his last market price (a gem signal, context only)

2024-08-04Trabzonspor → Villarrealfree
2023-09-08Arsenal → Trabzonsporfree
2023-07-01Nice → Arsenalundisclosed
2022-08-25Arsenal → Niceloan

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

In our coverage · Ivory Coast’s record

v NorwaySealed
at Curaçao0–2Called it
at Germany2–1Called it
v Ecuador1–0Missed it

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