Money cannot buy success in football

The 2014 World Cup fever that has been running since last month in Brazil has finally come to an end. People have now turned their attention to football players’ transfers and transactions especially across Europe. The 2014 World Cup has taught us some lessons about persistence and hard work for one to achieve a big goal in sport like in any other aspect of life. We saw that the World Cup 2014 champion ‘Germany’ has been consistent and has performed well even in the previous editions of the World Cup. Other teams like Mexico, Costa Rica, and Holland that performed well during the World Cup were comprised of locally grown up talents. I think this is a big message to football fraternity that having expensive players or stars in the team does not guarantee success. Football business is now days comparable to other business transactions because when you have money you will always look for a good and valuable commodity. A football club cannot keep money if there is a talented player they want from around the world. I think this is the reason why people have seen or read crazy money transactions amongst clubs. On another hand, it has become evident that spending has nothing to do with success of the team especially in major or elite competitions like the champions league. Teams spend billions of money but this does not guarantee anything. For example Abudhabi owned Manchester city football club has not tasted success in the lucrative champions’ league football in the last 5 years despite expenditures worth billions of dollars on player transactions and other welfares of the club. Last season, Chelsea had spent £112.7 million on new arrivals in the last two transfer windows whereas Manchester City spent £102m, Liverpool spent £50.2m but the reds finished the season on high and in a comfortable second position a head of Chelsea. It was the first time that Liverpool put up a great challenge for the title since 1990; the upward mobility of last season’s performance can be attributed to the philosophy of the coach and the players embracing his philosophy. Hard work from the coach and players made the Liverpool fans re-gain their football glory that had been lost since 2006. Having the money is always great and it is always necessary to bring in new players but what is important is to have the vision of how you want the club to progress. People or clubs have diverted to youth development because it provides assurance for the long term success of the club. You cannot succeed as a club without good development programmes and this is why youth football has become more popular today than ever. Even the most successful clubs we have seen during the current century do possess long-standing home grown talents. For example the likes of Andres Iniesta, Xavi Hernandez and Victor Valdes have contributed greatly to the success of Barcelona football club. They are players from Barcelona B and youth academy products that have been worth huge sums of million euros. Another successful club with good history of youth development is Bayern Munich. The likes of Thomas Muller, Philip Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Toni Kroos are all from Bayern Munich youth programme but are now world cup champions. Even nations like Brazil, Germany, Spain and Argentina compete favourably at the youth stage and come up with young, skilled and experienced players to represent their nations. Top class players like Lionel Messi, Philip Lahm,Thomas Muller, Manuel Neuer and others to mention but a few have performed well even at international youth level. To succeed in football business especially at club level, you must sell in order to buy and this is what we have seen at Bayern Munich. They have sold the likes of Toni Kroos to RealMadrid, Mario Mandzukic to Athletico Madrid football club and brought in Robert Lewandowski from Borrussia Dortmund, Sebastian Rode from Frankfurt as well as Juan Bernat from FC Valencia of Spain. When you make comparisons in their transfers and transactions; you will find no losses or differences between input and output in terms of price for players sold and those signed by the club yet you expect the club to maintain a good run of results or even achieve better results as seen in previous seasons.

Insight

Money cannot buy success in football