In the past, international tournaments had a big impact on the transfer market.
They’ve been shop windows within which valuations can spike, where clubs might
spot the solution to an existing need or where a previously unknown star might announce himself.
But that’s not as true anymore.
Why not?
Firstly, as a Premier League scout told The Athletic,
it’s because there’s just too much information.
“The situation where somebody who wasn’t known being signed purely
off the back of a summer tournament performance is in the past,” he says.
Not that far in the past, though.
James Rodriguez joined Real Madrid for £71 million
from Monaco after winning the Golden Boot at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Mario Mandzukic and his representatives had their bargaining power improved when his
impressive showing at Euro 2012 preceded a move from Wolfsburg to Bayern Munich later that summer.
Tottenham, meanwhile, saw fit to pay almost £14 million to sign Roman Pavlyuchenko from
Spartak Moscow after he had been an attacking star of Euro 2008.
Further back, in 2002, when Senegal reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup,
English clubs suddenly developed a sharpened interest in African players.
El Hadji Diouf joined Liverpool before the tournament began, Salif Diao quickly joined him,
while Amdy Faye moved to Portsmouth and the late Papa Bouba Diop was signed by Fulham.
Going back further still, Patrick Berger and Karel Poborsky both earned moves to
England after impressive performances at Euro’96, while Pavel Nedved was
signed by Lazio after scoring against the Italian national team in the group stage.
Tournaments can still have an influence, another agents says, but a more subtle one.
“A player’s club can value him at a higher price and the wages he can command might also rise.
Often, though, it’s a case of someone who did better than you thought they
would in a summer tournament and then interest being firmed up as a result.”
So, competitions still influence the market,
but do national teams and players still have the capacity to set the agenda?
No, says a leading agent, because too many hands have been burnt in the past.
“Clubs won’t buy from the Euros. Players that have been bought from tournaments haven’t been good
and – in any case – clubs are not suddenly going to watch a tournament and make
a decision on a player. Everyone knows everyone who is playing in a tournament.”
Knowledge is key. Whereas 20 or 30 years ago clubs depended on first-hand information gathered by
small scouting teams, today – because of growing wealth, huge recruiting departments, and the
exponential rise in available data and scouting tools – the same blind spots just don’t exist.
The Premier League’s most organised clubs, in theory at least,
just aren’t as easily swayed. Targets are in place long before a tournament even begins
and plans are drafted over two or three windows rather than a few weeks.
“The process (of recruiting for next season) is done now,” Leeds United’s sporting director
Victor Orta characterised that change during his appearance on The Phil Hay podcast in May.
“One video cannot change our perception of a player. In the past the big competition
was the sole case for the player. Now, if a player arrived at the Euro under-21 and
I don’t have a single report about him then I (would) need to sack two of my people.”
Dan Ashworth, Brighton’s technical director,
agrees – and warns against making decision based on small samples.
“I’m always really nervous about scouting in a tournament, where it’s only a three-to-seven-game
window, very condensed,” he told The Athletic. “you see a lot of examples of prices over-inflated
for players that have done well at one tournament but never reproduced that form.”
“I’ve never wanted to be too influenced,
but what you’ve got is players there (who) you’ve been tracking for 18 months.”
Which isn’t to say that tournaments no longer play a part in the process.
A senior football analyst at a leading English club tells The Athletic that “A tournament
becomes almost like an additional check, whether that’s under bigger pressure or on a bigger stage.
“People are more likely to believe they can rate someone accurately
if they’re playing against players that they know.
“If you think about a team like Czech Republic, or even Scotland,
there will be people who, rightly or wrongly, will think they can get a better reading of a player
if they’re playing against top Premier League and Champions League players.
There’s a definite element of that, which is fair.”
So, while the football world is a small place and getting smaller and rarely do players now emerge
from nowhere, these summers of international football can still alter perceptions,
even if they no hold quite so much sway over the actual decisions.