Gaz in Zurich
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The laws of football back big spenders on road to success
By Simon Kuper
Published: August 20 2010 19:56 | Last updated: August 20 2010 19:56
“This is gonna be our season,” say the ads for Manchester City on the sides of Manchester buses, and no wonder. City have spent the summer testing an economic proposition: if you outspend all other clubs, you will beat them on the field. This week alone City signed Mario Balotelli and James Milner. The club have now spent about £350m on transfers since being taken over by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family in 2008. Some pundits simply cannot imagine that City could ever succeed. However, the laws of football support the slogans.
“You can’t buy a winning team,” is one of the favourite pieces of untested wisdom in football. Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, voiced it this week. “The kind of spending we are seeing,” he sighed, “will be here for two or three years, until such time as they understand you can’t necessarily achieve all the time by spending.” He’s right that spending on transfers correlates poorly with success in the league. Big spenders Newcastle underperform misers Arsenal, for instance. Yet City have avoided the usual traps of the transfer market. Here is the logic behind their spree:
EDITOR’S CHOICE
More Sporting Life - Oct-15
● Buy players of the right age. A classic blunder is to pay for a player’s past performance. When Barcelona bought 29-year-old Thierry Henry from Arsenal, for instance, he had little future performance left in him. City typically buy players aged between 24 and 28, already proven but not clapped out. True, Balotelli is only 20, and Jerome Boateng 21, but they garland a proven side. If they fulfil their promise, fine. If not, senior players can carry the team.
● Avoid buying stars of World Cups. Real Madrid – experts at buying the wrong players – signed two young Germans who shone in South Africa. But a month’s tournament is a rather small sample on which to judge a player. City haven’t let the tournament cloud their judgment. Their big recent signings either barely appeared in the World Cup (Spain’s David Silva), weren’t there (Balotelli) or blighted their reputations by playing for England (Milner).
● Buy only as many players as you need. Like a shopaholic who chucks her shopping bags unopened into the wardrobe, Real buy players when they have good equivalents already. City are more discerning. That fact is sometimes clouded by the number of their purchases. But they had to buy in bulk: when Sheikh Mansour arrived, they had zero world-class players. They needed 22, two for each position. Some purchases failed (notably Robinho) but that is the way with transfers.
City’s shortcomings in this market either don’t matter or aren’t their fault. Yes, they always pay above market value. That’s inevitable when every selling club knows that your owner has 10 per cent of global oil reserves. The sheikh can afford to pay premium rates.
City’s other shortcoming – their failure to buy superstars – is because those players generally reject them. Greats such as Kaka and Fernando Torres can choose their club, and practically choose their salary. Interestingly, the few players who have consented to join City from giant clubs are mostly Africans: Emmanuel Adebayor and the Touré brothers. African footballers, who typically support dozens of relatives, care about the difference between earning £25m or £30m over a career. They will be tempted by City’s premium.
City’s total wage bill is now probably higher than Manchester United’s and Arsenal’s, and nearing Chelsea’s. That matters, because whereas transfers don’t predict success, wages do. My own favourite footballing wisdom comes from the sports economist Stefan Szymanski: averaged over a period of several years, in both England and Italy, the correlation between a club’s wage bill and its league position is about 90 per cent. Last season, for instance, Chelsea finished first in England, United second and Arsenal third. That just happened to be the ranking order of their wage bills.
In short, you can buy a winning team. This ought to be City’s season.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
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<a class="postlink" href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e4d69d50-ac87-11df-8582-00144feabdc0.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e4d69d50-ac87 ... abdc0.html</a>?
The laws of football back big spenders on road to success
By Simon Kuper
Published: August 20 2010 19:56 | Last updated: August 20 2010 19:56
“This is gonna be our season,” say the ads for Manchester City on the sides of Manchester buses, and no wonder. City have spent the summer testing an economic proposition: if you outspend all other clubs, you will beat them on the field. This week alone City signed Mario Balotelli and James Milner. The club have now spent about £350m on transfers since being taken over by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family in 2008. Some pundits simply cannot imagine that City could ever succeed. However, the laws of football support the slogans.
“You can’t buy a winning team,” is one of the favourite pieces of untested wisdom in football. Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, voiced it this week. “The kind of spending we are seeing,” he sighed, “will be here for two or three years, until such time as they understand you can’t necessarily achieve all the time by spending.” He’s right that spending on transfers correlates poorly with success in the league. Big spenders Newcastle underperform misers Arsenal, for instance. Yet City have avoided the usual traps of the transfer market. Here is the logic behind their spree:
EDITOR’S CHOICE
More Sporting Life - Oct-15
● Buy players of the right age. A classic blunder is to pay for a player’s past performance. When Barcelona bought 29-year-old Thierry Henry from Arsenal, for instance, he had little future performance left in him. City typically buy players aged between 24 and 28, already proven but not clapped out. True, Balotelli is only 20, and Jerome Boateng 21, but they garland a proven side. If they fulfil their promise, fine. If not, senior players can carry the team.
● Avoid buying stars of World Cups. Real Madrid – experts at buying the wrong players – signed two young Germans who shone in South Africa. But a month’s tournament is a rather small sample on which to judge a player. City haven’t let the tournament cloud their judgment. Their big recent signings either barely appeared in the World Cup (Spain’s David Silva), weren’t there (Balotelli) or blighted their reputations by playing for England (Milner).
● Buy only as many players as you need. Like a shopaholic who chucks her shopping bags unopened into the wardrobe, Real buy players when they have good equivalents already. City are more discerning. That fact is sometimes clouded by the number of their purchases. But they had to buy in bulk: when Sheikh Mansour arrived, they had zero world-class players. They needed 22, two for each position. Some purchases failed (notably Robinho) but that is the way with transfers.
City’s shortcomings in this market either don’t matter or aren’t their fault. Yes, they always pay above market value. That’s inevitable when every selling club knows that your owner has 10 per cent of global oil reserves. The sheikh can afford to pay premium rates.
City’s other shortcoming – their failure to buy superstars – is because those players generally reject them. Greats such as Kaka and Fernando Torres can choose their club, and practically choose their salary. Interestingly, the few players who have consented to join City from giant clubs are mostly Africans: Emmanuel Adebayor and the Touré brothers. African footballers, who typically support dozens of relatives, care about the difference between earning £25m or £30m over a career. They will be tempted by City’s premium.
City’s total wage bill is now probably higher than Manchester United’s and Arsenal’s, and nearing Chelsea’s. That matters, because whereas transfers don’t predict success, wages do. My own favourite footballing wisdom comes from the sports economist Stefan Szymanski: averaged over a period of several years, in both England and Italy, the correlation between a club’s wage bill and its league position is about 90 per cent. Last season, for instance, Chelsea finished first in England, United second and Arsenal third. That just happened to be the ranking order of their wage bills.
In short, you can buy a winning team. This ought to be City’s season.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Print articleEmail articleClip this articleOrder reprints