Free Soccernomics by Simon Kuper, Stefan Szymanski Page A

manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team. In his book Moneyball , Michael Lewis explains how Beane turned one of the poorest teams in baseball into one of the best by the simple method of rejecting what everyone in the sport had always “known” to be true about the transfer market. Lewis writes, “Understanding that he would never have a Yankee-sized checkbook, Beane had set about looking for inefficiencies in the game.” It’s odd how many of the same inefficiencies exist in soccer, too.
    MARKET INEFFICIENCIES
    If we study these masters of transfers, it will help us uncover the secrets of the market that all the other clubs are missing. First of all, though, we present a few of the most obvious inefficiencies in the market. Although it doesn’t take a Wenger or a Beane to identify these, they continue to exist.
    A New Manager Wastes Money
    Typically, the new manager wants to put his mark on his new team. So he buys his own players. He then has to “clear out” some of his predecessor’s purchases, usually at a discount.

    G E N T L E M E N P R E F E R B L O N D S
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    Strangely, it’s Alan Sugar’s tightfisted Tottenham that provides the worst example. In May 2000 the club’s manager, George Graham, paid Dynamo Kiev $16.5 million—nearly twice Spurs’s previous record fee—
    for the Ukrainian striker Sergei Rebrov. Clearly, Rebrov was meant to be a long-term investment.
    But nine months later, Sugar, the club chairman, sold his stake in Tottenham, whereupon the new owners sacked Graham and replaced him with Glenn Hoddle. Hoddle didn’t appreciate Rebrov. The record signing ended up on the bench, was sent on loan to a Turkish team, and in 2004 moved to West Ham on a free transfer.
    A few years later Spurs discovered a new method for short-term money burning: sell and then buy back exactly the same players. In January 2008, they transferred Jermain Defoe to Portsmouth for nearly $15
    million, and six months later sent Robbie Keane to Liverpool for $38
    million. Then, in January 2009, under their new manager, Harry Redknapp, they bought both players back again. They shelled out about the same total sum that they had received for the duo the year before, though their outlay could rise by about another $11 million depending on how often Keane plays. If you add in agents’ fees, taxes, the loss of a year of Defoe’s services and six months of Keane’s, plus the twofold dis-ruption to the team, this sort of waste helps explain why Spurs got left behind by Wenger’s Arsenal.
    Yet Spurs and Newcastle are only marginally sillier than most clubs.
    This form of waste is common across soccer: a new manager is allowed to buy and sell on the pretense that he is reshaping the club for many years to come, even though in practice he almost always leaves pretty rapidly. He doesn’t care how much his wheeler-dealing costs: he doesn’t get a bonus if the club makes a profit.
    Stars of Recent World Cups or
    European Championships Are Overvalued
    The worst time to buy a player is in the summer when he’s just done well at a big tournament. Everyone in the transfer market has seen how 52

    good the player is, but he is exhausted and quite likely sated with success. Overpaying for these shooting stars fits what Moneyball calls “a tendency to be overly influenced by a guy’s most recent performance: what he did last was not necessarily what he would do next.”
    Newcastle is, of course, the supreme sucker for shooting stars. This is largely because its fans demand it. Newcastle (or Spurs, or Marseille in France) probably isn’t even trying to be “rational” in the transfer market. Its aim is not to buy the best results for as little money as possible. Rather, its big signings (like buying fragile Michael Owen for $30
    million) are best understood as marketing gifts to their fans. Buying a big name is a way of saying, “Yes, we are a big club.” It gives the supporters the thrill of expectation, a sense that their