\u201cSpeed is always important,\u201d Thierry Henry once said. The question for 2025\/26 is which players turn raw pace into meaningful moments. Using data from Gradient Sports, via The Athletic, this list ranks those with the highest maximum acceleration over the first three metres of a sprint.<\/p>\n
Max acceleration: 5.5 m\/s\u00b2 \u2014 Ola Aina. In his first season for Nottingham Forest Aina recalled a moment when he outran Kyle Walker. His friends\u2019 phones were \u201cfrantic\u201d with messages after the run. \u201cAfterwards,\u201d Aina recalled to The Guardian, \u201che said something like: \u2018You\u2019re pretty quick\u2019 and \u2018You caught me flat-footed.\u2019 But he was very chilled about it. He\u2019s done the same thing to other players so many times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Max acceleration: 5.6 m\/s\u00b2 \u2014 Alex Scott. The bandy-legged central midfielder from Guernsey is not an obvious blur, but his burst has helped the best season of his career. As a fixture in Andoni Iraola\u2019s full-throttle pressing unit, he must be light on his feet to apply pressure and escape opponents.<\/p>\n
Max acceleration: 5.6 m\/s\u00b2 \u2014 Noah Okafor. \u201cHe\u2019s a player of high potential,\u201d Daniel Farke said of Noah Okafor upon his summer arrival at Leeds United, \u201che more or less has all the skills.\u201d Speed stands out among them.<\/p>\n
Max acceleration: 5.6 m\/s\u00b2 \u2014 J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku. \u201cJ\u00e9r\u00e9my is the best player in the world in the first five meters,\u201d Pep Guardiola said. Doku has deliberately slowed parts of his game. \u201cWhen I arrived I was younger and had a lot of energy and always wanted to go forward,\u201d Doku maturely reflected earlier this season, \u201cbut what I\u2019ve learned is that sometimes you need to know the moments in the game to be more mature and calm down.\u201d Before the end of January he had a career-best nine assists across all competitions.<\/p>\n
Max acceleration: 5.6 m\/s\u00b2 \u2014 Pedro Neto. A sporting family background underpins his athletic profile: a father who played roller hockey, a mother who played volleyball, twin sisters who won national trampolining titles and an uncle who was a professional soccer player.<\/p>\n
Max acceleration: 5.7 m\/s\u00b2 \u2014 Diego G\u00f3mez. In his first full Premier League season he has lined up in seven different positions for Fabian H\u00fcrzeler, with swiftness key to that adaptability.<\/p>\n
Max acceleration: 5.8 m\/s\u00b2 \u2014 Benjamin \u0160e\u0161ko. At 6’5″ and 22 years old, the forward combines a thunderous shot off both feet with blistering pace; he scored against Everton in February during a productive run under Michael Carrick.<\/p>\n
Max acceleration: 5.8 m\/s\u00b2 \u2014 Aaron Wan-Bissaka. His reputation preceded him after moving to Manchester United. Wilfried Zaha recalled: \u201cI had a little look back and I thought, \u2018Oh my God … it\u2019s Aaron.\u2019\u201d Wan-Bissaka dispossessed him and Zaha added, \u201cAny other player…\u201d.<\/p>\n
Max acceleration: 5.9 m\/s\u00b2 \u2014 Kaoru Mitoma. He turned down a professional contract at 19 to study physical education and produced a thesis in dribbling. He strapped GoPros to players, investigated diet and consulted Satoru Tanigawa to refine his running and dribbling. Mitoma\u2019s takeaway was that the best players don\u2019t look at the ball and the ultimate task is to shift the opponent\u2019s center of gravity. His speed complements that approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A data-led list of the Premier League’s fastest accelerations in 2025\/26, measured over three metres<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,969],"tags":[1081,1162,317],"class_list":["post-7120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics-stats","category-premier-league","tag-adaptation","tag-analytics","tag-benjamin-sesko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}