The CIES Football Observatory is pleased to announce the launch the eighth edition of the Annual Review. This reference publication presents a comparative analysis of clubs and players in the big-5 European leagues at demographic, economic and pitch performance levels. An excerpt of the study is to be found on the Football Observatory’s website.
The Annual Review notably reveals that Lionel Messi
would largely break the 94-million euro transfer fee record. Estimated
on the basis of an exclusive econometric model, his value is between 217
and 252 million euro. With an estimated value between 102 and 118
million, Cristiano Ronaldo would probably also break his own record.
At club level, the analysis shows that
Barcelona holds the greatest assets from a player economic value
perspective: 658 million euro. This figure is three times higher than
that spent on signing the players used during the 2012/13 season. This
reflects the extraordinary ability of the Catalan side to train, launch
and add value to home-grown players.
Lionel Messi
is not only the most expensive big-5 league player, but also the most
decisive one for the 2012/13 season. The ranking is based on the
performances for five key indicators: shooting, chance creation, take
on, distribution and recovery. The Argentinean outranks Champions League
winner Franck Ribéry and Cristiano Ronaldo.
The most decisive young player was Mario Götze. The new Bayern Munich signing is followed by two very promising Belgian footballers belonging to Chelsea: Kevin de Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku. They definitively both deserve to have a chance to play for the London club.
The performance analysis at club level shows
that Bayern Munich’s fantastic season was the result of the unmatched
balance between attack, distribution and defence. The Champions League
winner tops the German Bundesliga rankings for the three key team
performance indicators covered by our analysis: defensive solidity, grip
on the game and attacking incisiveness. No other champion was able to
do so.
The 2013 Annual Review also investigates the
evolution in competitive balance within leagues since 2003/04. With the
exception of Italy, point gaps between teams are on the increase. This
trend is particularly marked in Spain and Germany. Over the last decade,
the three most successful clubs achieved more than 60% of podium ranks
in all the leagues, up to 80% in Spain and England (24 out of 30).
In 2012/13, money spent in transfer fees to
sign first team players was highly correlated to club results in all the
leagues. All the champions were among the three biggest spenders in
their respective league. This confirms the strong influence of money on
success.
Without new regulatory mechanisms to improve income distribution, competitive
balance will be further jeopardised by the transformation of top level
clubs into global brands, their regular participation in the
increasingly lucrative Champions League and investments made by wealthy
owners.
The Annual Review is on sale as a pdf on the CIES online shop. Journalists, students and academics may obtain a discount by writing to football.observatory(at)cies.ch. Please write to the same address for more information.
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