In January 2021, the CIES Football Observatory released their biannual transfer market rundown,
listing Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford as the most valuable footballer in the world, at €165m.
Rashford is a very fine player, but it was a ranking which raised more than a few eyebrows.
€165m? Is he really worth more than Kylian Mbappe, Neymar, Erling Haaland? Also,
what is the CIES Football Observatory, and how does it calculate players’ values?
Football Observatory was founded in 2005 by Dr. Raffaele Poli and Dr. Loïc Ravenel.
It’s part-funded by FIFA and sits within the International Centre for
Sports Studies (CIES), an independent study group located in Switzerland.
And they use a comprehensive, but easy to understand algorithm to calculate potential fees,
comprising factors which belong to one of three categories.
And it’s those variables that show the working for their Rashford ranking.
The first category is all about the player.
How long does he have left on his contract. How old is he? What does his career trajectory look
like? In addition to which, and with the help of Opta data, how well is he playing?
The second relates to the player’s club,
which is assessed across a twin basis – sporting and economic.
‘Sporting’ is a calculation based on how the player’s club has performed
in its domestic league, but also the strength of the competition collectively,
and how teams from that country have done in continental or international tournaments.
The second category is an economic evaluation,
and that’s instructed not only by the club’s recent transfer spending,
but also the expenditure typical among those clubs who compete in the same areas of the game – the
top-six of the Premier League, for instance, or the latter rounds of the Champions League.
And that leaves a third, final category: the context of the marketplace itself – the
inflationary state of transfer spending at any particular moment.
The resulting formula is as close as football has to a scientific method
for determining value. It’s not perfect, but then neither is the market – and yet Football
Observatory is able to report high levels of accuracy. In a survey of 1790 transfers occurring
between July 2012 and January 2020, their model was shown to be accurate over 80% of the time.
And the estimation of Marcus Rashford’s value, based on the criteria set out,
isn’t obviously wrong: He’s 23 years-old, a full England international who has many
years left on his contract and who is in the best form of his career.
And he plays for a resurgent Manchester United side, in the richest club league in
the world and with the likely prospect of regular Champions League football.
Yes, Rashford is extremely valuable,
even without considering his popularity at Old Trafford and local boy appeal in Manchester.
Other rankings describe the sensitivity of the Football Observatory algorithm.
With only eighteen months now left on his contract, Kylian Mbappe – who was at the
head of the list a year ago – saw his value drop to €149.4m, which was only good enough for fifth
place. Just above him is another Manchester United player: Bruno Fernandes. His €151.1m
tag reflects not only his outstanding form, but also his transfer to a superclub, his move to
the financially dominant Premier League, and a contract which could potentially run to 2026.
Just ahead of him, in second place and with a value of €152m, is Erling Haaland.
In pure footballing terms, it seems that the Norwegian should be a more valuable commodity
than Rashford. He’s younger, he scores more goals and – subjectively – he’s probably better.
And yet his lesser valuation reflects Borussia Dortmund’s financial inferiority,
their lesser standing compared to Manchester United on the field, and the respective transfer
patterns in the Premier League and the Bundesliga. In other words, it’s a determination dependent
on the sporting and economic evaluation of the two clubs, not just of the players themselves.
In other instances, discrepancies can be explained by factors that intentionally aren’t
included in the evaluation process, but which do have an obvious effect on a player’s value.
Contract clauses, for instance.
Haaland’s €152m valuation doesn’t reflect the release clause which will
become active during the summer of 2023. And, prior to moving to Chelsea in 2020,
Timo Werner held a €90m valuation almost double the fee eventually agreed.
There was also a significant difference between the €70m Chelsea paid for Kai Havertz,
and his €95m valuation by Football Observatory. This, according to Dr Poli,
was partly explainable by the club being willing to pay more money up front,
which was particularly attractive to Bayer Leverkusen during the global pandemic.
In other instances, there might also be determining factors which can’t be accounted for.
A player might fall out with a teammate or coach.
A club could suddenly experience financial difficulties and need to make a quick sale.
Or perhaps a better player is signed to play the player’s position.
In each instance, the fee that changes hands would be very different to a player’s actual value.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of recent transfers that would seem to confirm the validity
of the group’s methodology. Arthur Melo was valued at €72m prior to his move to Juventus,
and would change clubs for almost the same fee (excluding add-on clauses), and Lille
striker Victor Osimhen had a €64m tag ahead of his €60m move to Napoli.
Nelson Semedo also recently moved to Wolverhampton Wanderers for almost precisely his £27m valuation.
Other surprising estimates include Jack Grealish at just €50m,
Dele Alli €30m and Trent Alexander-Arnold at an astronomical €150m, but those figures all seem
commensurate with what another team would be willing to pay and what their respective clubs
would be willing – or forced – to accept. Inter Milan’s Romelu Lukaku is also assigned a value of
somewhere between €90m-€120m, which accurately reflects his career’s resurgence since leaving
Manchester United, with Inter spending €74m to sign him in the summer of 2019.
It’s not an exact science. It’s not being claimed as one. But it is a reliable guide
to what players are worth, even in an industry in which most of them never come on the market.