The Premier League possesses some of the most athletically gifted players in world football, with Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham stars recording some of the top speeds ever seen.
Among the fastest players in the English top flight are wingers, midfielders, centre-backs and full-backs.
Between the top speeds from top to tenth, there’s less than a hundredth of a second. Here, we have assessed the fastest players in Premier League history, after data started being recorded in 2020-21.
=10. Matheus Nunes
Nunes might not have had the chance to show his impressive sprinting skills had he stayed in Manchester City‘s midfield.
He’d played there the majority of his City career before this season, when he’s been deployed at right-back on 15 occasions.
As a wide defender, the Portuguese has had to battle with some powerful wingers, and clocked a highest speed of 36.70 kilometres per hour this term in doing so.
=10. Brennan Johnson
Johnson’s nature as a direct winger has seen him impress at the highest level of English football with both Nottingham Forest and Tottenham.
It was with the former club that he set his fastest Premier League speed of 36.70km/h.
He did so against champions Manchester City in 2022-23, against a back line containing Ruben Dias, Aymeric Laporte and speed demon Kyle Walker.
A footballer so quick that he sometimes decides running normally isn’t effective enough, and decides to start pumping his legs higher as if he’s riding a bicycle, Rudiger is blessed with great physical attributes.
@fifaworldcup Rudiger. 🏃♂️💨 #FIFAWorldCup #Germany ♬ original sound – viciousftbl
At Chelsea, this saw him become one of the fastest players in Premier League history – but running more like a normal person this time.
The German defender set a top speed of 36.72km/h against Brighton in the 2021-22 campaign.
There was not an awful lot to shout about from a Burnley perspective in the 2023-24 Premier League season. The Clarets were relegated with a total of 24 points.
Perhaps O’Shea’s blistering pace does little to make their fans feel any better about the campaign, but it at least puts him fairly high up the list of fastest Premier League players.
The Irishman ran at 36.73km/h against Crystal Palace, though it didn’t count for an awful lot, as Burnley lost 2-0.
It’s not massively common to see a central midfielder move as quickly as Liverpool man Szoboszlai’s top speed.
He’s in fact one of only two players in his position in the top 10 fastest Premier League speeds of all time.
The Hungarian travelled at 36.76km/h against Wolves in September 2023, with Reds fans believing that was achieved when Szoboszlai was tracking back from a corner, preventing a 1v1 attack against his side.
Moder spent the first few months of the 2023-24 season sidelined with an ACL injury. But when he came back to action for Brighton, he was clearly in top shape.
The midfielder set a blistering top speed of 36.84km/h, pipping Szoboszlai as the quickest Premier League central midfielder of all time.
One of the most direct wingers in the Premier League, Chelsea man Neto gets most of his success from knocking the ball past full-backs and beating them for pace.
That’s the case now he’s at the Blues, and the same was true when he was at Wolves.
That was where he set the fifth-fastest Premier League sprint of all time – 36.86km/h. He did it against Luton during September 2023.
Elanga has had the most separate sprints in the Premier League’s top 100 during 2024-25 of any player. His most memorable came against former club Manchester United, when the winger was said to have covered 85 metres in nine seconds.
He clocked around 36.20km/h in that sprint, and later in the same game, beat that by travelling at 36.70km/h.
It was the second fastest speed clocked in the league in 2024-25, though he had already gone one better in his career previously, with a top speed of 36.91km/h.
Luton have been featured on this list already, but on the wrong side, with explosive winger Neto putting them to the sword with his electric pace.
But they’ve also possessed some of their own speedsters, with Ogbene the fastest of them. Only two players in the history of the league have clocked a faster pace than the winger’s 36.93km/h, which came a week before Neto scorched Luton’s grass.
To the eye, one of the fastest footballers in the history of the game, and Walker’s stats back it up. At every level, his defending has been helped by his blistering pace, and he’s had an illustrious career because of it.
Frequently helping Manchester City get back quickly in transition, he was on top running form against Everton in May 2023, setting a fastest pace of 37.31km/h, in a game it’s little surprise the Toffees failed to score in.
For years, there was little question that Walker was the fastest player in the Premier League.
But when Tottenham signed Van de Ven from Wolfsburg – a player who had run 36.66km/h in the Bundesliga – there was a chance that status was under threat.
It did not take the Tottenham centre-back long to make his mark in England. On three separate occasions, the Dutchman has run faster than 36.70km/h. One of those was enough to beat Walker’s 37.31km/h.
Van de Ven did so against Brentford in early 2024. Racing back to catch Keane Lewis-Potter, the Tottenham man set a new record as the fastest Premier League player ever – 37.38km/h.
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