Three matchweeks into the Thai League 1 season, the best-rated Thai outfield players are not who you might expect – and the goalkeepers are quietly outperforming everyone

Three matches is not a season. It is barely a mood. But it is enough to start asking questions, and the first set of numbers from the 2026/27 Thai League 1 campaign asks a few awkward ones of anyone who assumed the league’s domestic talent would be led by its younger generation.

At the top of our first Thailand’s Top 10 of the season sits Peeradol Chamratsamee. He is 34, he plays in Port’s midfield, and across all 270 minutes of their opening three matches he has averaged a match rating of 7.59, comfortably clear of the field. The league average for players with at least 180 minutes is 6.85. Peeradol has two goals, is taking four shots per 90 minutes – a startling number for a central midfielder – and completing 91% of his passes. Port’s early-season story has been built on his legs as much as anyone’s.

Second is Weerathep Pomphan, and his case is simpler: goals. Three of them, from midfield, in 236 minutes for Bangkok United. His expected-goals figure of 2.28 suggests he has been finishing well but not absurdly so; he has been getting into positions where goals happen. What he has not been doing is creating for others – no key passes so far – which makes him an intriguing, slightly old-fashioned kind of attacking midfielder: the one who arrives rather than supplies.

Port provide a second name in the top three in Peerawat Akkratum, whose 7.21 rating comes with a 94% pass completion rate and two tackles, two interceptions and two key passes per 90. It is a defender’s line that reads like a midfielder’s.

Below them, the pack is tight. Rattanakorn Maikami (Uthai Thani), Sasalak Haiprakon (Buriram United) and Kritsada Kaman (Pathum United) are separated by a hundredth of a point. Rattanakorn’s 4.33 tackles per 90 is the most destructive number in the list. Anon Amornlendsak (Rayong), Wittaya Moonwong (Lamphun Warrior), Eakkanit Punya and Jonathan Khemdee (both Ratchaburi) complete the ten, all sitting just above the league average.

The goalkeepers’ corner

We have given goalkeepers their own chart, because they would have taken over the first one. Five Thai keepers are rated higher than all but the top three outfield players. Ayutthaya United’s Warut Mekmusik is the best-rated Thai player in the league, outfield or not, at 7.72 – only two players in the whole division, both Brazilian forwards, are rated higher – with an 85% save rate. Prachuap’s Wattanachai Srathongjan has saved 89% of the shots he has faced. For a league so often discussed in terms of its imported forwards, it is the domestic goalkeepers who have started strongest.

The usual caveat applies, and applies loudly: three matches, small samples, and one bad afternoon can rewrite a table like this. That is rather the point of doing it every week.

Tomorrow: we take a closer look at one of these ten.

Data FootyStats.