March 21 – A CIES Football Observatory report, released today, highlights the issues of player hoarding and how this creates and sustains a competitive imbalance in European football.
The authors of the report, Raffaele Poli, Roger Besson and Loïc Ravenel, note that “the proportion of full internationals drops from 46% for ‘Big 5’ clubs to 15% for fourth echelon leagues”. Big 5 clubs are defined as those teams playing in top divisions of the most economically powerful leagues in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Taking a club example, in the current season Manchester City has played 24 full internationals, the highest figure in Europe. In 2012 Manchester City was also the European team with the highest number of players with international caps (19).
The CIES report is underpinned by data from its latest Demographic Study. In 2012, the study covered 473 clubs, 31 leagues and 11,631 footballers.
The 31 leagues included in the study were divided into four categories. The Big Five were defined by the annual budget for salaries per club being on average over €35 million. The other categories cover leagues where the figure for salaries per club is between €10-35 million (Russia, Turkey, Holland, Portugal, Scotland and Greece), between €3-10 million (Switzerland, Ukraine, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Romania and Israel) and less than €3 million (Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, Cyprus, Belarus, Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland and Slovenia).
The study found the average age of a player is higher in the richest leagues (26.5 years of age), dropping to 25.6 years of age for the bottom level. The obvious conclusion is that the squads in the biggest leagues have the more experienced players – a criteria of performance for winning teams.
In contrast, there are fewer young players in the ‘Big Five’, with only 16% being under 22 compared to 24% in the fourth economic level. Young players need to develop their talent within the football labour market and at an earlier stage in their development are a cheaper source of labour for financially restricted teams.
When looking at the presence of club-trained players in first team squads, the study found home-grown footballers is much more common in Slovakia (40%) than in Cyprus (11%) or in Bulgaria (16%). In contrast the percentage of club-trained players in the wealthier clubs is particularly low in Turkey (9%), Portugal (9%) and Russia (13%).
But there are pockets that buck the trend, depending on the local philosophy. For example, Spain (26%), Holland (22%) and France (21%) all have higher percentages of home-grown players in their squads.
And there are further differences within clubs in the ‘Big 5’ leagues. For example, 59% of FC Barcelona players were club-trained compared to 26% for Real Madrid; 40% for Manchester United compared to 9% for Chelsea.
International player recruitment has been the major change in the football labour market in recent times. For the Big Five, the percentage of players imported from abroad increased from 19% to 43% between 1995 and 2012.
The study found that “on 1 October 2012, the presence of expatriates in leagues covered by the census was over one-third (36%) of squads… The proportion of expatriate footballers is higher in richest championships than those where clubs have comparatively limited means available. Only one-quarter (27%) of players of leagues in the fourth echelon were expatriates.”
And this in turn leads to an increased presence of full international players in the ‘Big 5’ clubs. The proportion of full internationals drops from 46% for Big Five clubs to 15% at the fourth level of the study.
Just taking active internationals into account, the differences are even greater. Active internationals are defined as those who have played at least one match with the national team during the year of the census. Active internationals are six times more numerous in the top level of the economic rankings (29%) than in the bottom one (5%). At league level, the percentage of active internationals varies from 42% in England to only 1% in Slovenia.
The authors highlight Russia as particularly interesting. Active international footballers in clubs has increased from 11% in 2009 to 30% in 2012. This rise reflects the growing economic means of Russian clubs who are competing for players nd coaches and are now starting to make progress in European competitions.
The full 2013 CIES Football Observatory Annual Review will be published in June. The paper just published can be read at footballperspectives.org.
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