Velocity is commonly considered favorable in most professional sports, yet history indicates that football players do not necessarily need a Usain Bolt-style acceleration.

If this were the case, Bolt himself might have had a more illustrious career than the one he briefly pursued post his dominance in the world of sprinting.

Many of the sport’s legendary players were undeniably swift, compensating for physical limitations by their adeptness in processing information and making swift decisions. Nevertheless, at times, decelerating becomes crucial.

English football has long been revered for its rugged intensity all the way back to the days of kick-and-rush, but foreign influence in contemporary times has allowed for an amalgamation of cultures to make up the country’s footballing identity.

Running a lot and doing it fast is no longer celebrated as it once was on English shores. Slow and steady may not win you the race, but you can certainly survive in the Premier League without possessing lightning-quick speed.

Here are the 2024/25 Premier League’s five slowest players based on their top speeds recorded by Opta.

Opta define 25 km/h as a ‘sprint’, and the slowest recorded player in the Premier League this season, Bernd Leno, has only reached a top speed of 23.6 km/h despite playing every single minute between the sticks for Fulham. The German only saunters when he races off his line.

If we exclude goalkeepers, Bernardo Silva, perennial Premier League winner and so often a man lauded for his work rate, has the slowest recorded top speed in the division. His peak of 29.4 km/h is 7.7 km/h slower than the top speed of the fastest man in the Premier League, Micky van de Ven.

While age has played a role in Bernardo’s physical decline, as well as Pep Guardiola’s unwillingness to offer him respite during the first half of the season, he’s never been a man reliant on speed despite spending much of his career in a position where a burst of pace is supposedly a job requirement.

Of the five slowest Premier League players this term, all but one are at least 30 years old. Craig Dawson (a top speed of 29.6 km/h) is still going at 34 but hasn’t played much football at all, while Casemiro and Tomas Soucek (both 30.2 km/h) have performed more regularly, especially the latter. Not only is Soucek the joint-fourth slowest in the division, but he’s also covered the most ground while jogging (140.8 km) and is averaging the second-most distance covered per 90 minutes (12.2 km).

The Czech midfielder gets through a ton of work, but rarely does he think speed is necessary.

The only man yet to breach 30 is Arsenal’s summer arrival Mikel Merino, who boasts a top speed of 29.8 km/h. The Spaniard has been used as a makeshift centre-forward in recent weeks, but Mikel Arteta unsurprisingly doesn’t ask Merino to do much channel running. He performs a target-man function and has proven to be a fairly handy operator in the opposition’s box.