In his book “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy”, Economist, Sociologist and Philosopher Joseph Schumpeter put forth a hypothesis that a capitalist system will always attract the most talented individuals in the world.
To generalize this a little bit:
any system where there are significant gains (mostly financial) to be made for an individual by freely applying his/her gifts and talents, will almost always attract the most talented individuals.
This is a somewhat evident but highly underrated framework for thinking about systems, businesses, economies etc. Let’s apply it to the world of football(soccer 🤮).
Let’s look at the English Premier League. Last season(2017-2018), 20th placed West Brom made about 106 million euros at the end of the season. That’s almost the 109 million euros that 4th placed Valencia earned in the LaLiga. I’m sure these differences are even more staggering when you compare them to prize money distributions in the Bundesliga and Serie A. We don’t even need to look at numbers to contrast player wage bills across various leagues (Alexis Sanchez 👀 🤑).
Another dimension to compare the finances across various leagues is to compare how many clubs are owned by wealthy foreign “investors”. About 13 out of the current 20 Premier League clubs have foreign investors as majority stake holders. In the Serie A, it is 5/20. In Ligue 1, it is 6. Since Roman Abramovic purchased Chelsea in the early 2000’s, the Premier League has been attracting and keeping similar foreign folk with deep pockets.
The point here is that the Premier League is chock full of cash compared to the other big leagues.
Now that we have established that the Premier League is richer than other leagues, can we consequently confirm that it has more talent than other leagues?
I think the answer is yes!
If talent was measured by trophies won, it wouldn’t even be fair to compare the number of trophies won by the current Premier League managers to the mangers in other leagues. When you add Guardiola’s trophies to those of Mourinho, then add Pellegrinis’, then Emerys’, you start to see a picture.
We could also assess talent by looking at the number of managers that change clubs after a successful season or a series of successful seasons. When you compare the influx of managers riding on a wave of success into the Premier League compared to that in other leagues, you see the same picture. Post-Porto Mourinho, Post-Valencia Benitez, Post-Sevilla/PSG Emery, Post-Napoli Sarri, Post-Juventus Conte, Post Espanyol Pochettino etc How many relatively unknown managers who achieved sudden success in a different league end up in the LaLiga, Serie A or Bundesliga? I don’t know but I can bet it is not as much as the number that come into the Premier League. In fact, if we considered the current set of managers who have achieved some kind of recent success but are currently without jobs – {Conte, Zidane, Jardim} – we could use our “follow the money” hypothesis as a framework to predict that 2/3 of these managers will end up in the Premier League in the next year. Adjust this number appropriately as more managers get fired and join our list.
What about players? Are the best players in the Premier League?
I think the answer is yes as well. I will preface the upcoming points by saying that regardless of the method you use to judge “best”, best player + best manager does not always equal best team. Remember this!
The Premier League contains more of the best players in the world than any other league. I don’t have any numbers to show this (future post maybe?) but I can suggest a useful heuristic.
Yes some people will mention the players at Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern. Yes, Ronaldo and Messi exist and they do not play in the Premier League. Yes, English teams always struggle against Spanish teams. First, this is not the point I am making. If there are 10 best players in the world, my point is not that the Premier League will have number 1 and 2 but rather that it will have 5 or more out of the 10 players with the other 5 being distributed amongst the other teams. La Liga might have number 1 and Serie A , number 2 but the EPL will have a bigger share of the 10 players.
Here is a fair heuristic to think about this. Let’s assume that the best countries in the world at football go to the World Cup. Let us also assume that the best players in every country get selected to play for their countries at the World Cup. These two points mean that the World Cup is literally a show case for the best players in the world. If we looked at the breakdown of the number of players by league represented we see that the Premier League is massively overrepresented . 108 players from the Premier League vs 78 from La Liga vs 62 from the Bundesliga vs 58 from Serie A. These numbers get even crazier when you look at just semi finalists or quarter finalists.
Again, best player + best manager =/= best team.
Addendum: league with the best players =/= best league.
Having concluded that, in the sufficiently long run, talent converges to where the money is at, we will make some predictions:
All things remaining constant – UEFA remaining stupid and corrupt, Financial Fair Play remaining a joke, steady influx of foreign investors into football, the big clubs don’t create a runaway super league –
- Transfer prices and player wages will keep rising in tandem. There will be no such thing as a wage structure. Premier League clubs (and PSG) will keep paying over the top for young talented players while Real, Bayern, Juve get away with paying peanuts based on prestige and league monopoly.
- The world best player will eventually come from or come to the Premier League. Think long term post Ronaldo and Messi.
- Because the top Premier League clubs cannot build a monopoly based on money alone, they will have to find other ways to stand out. Some clubs will try to compete based on prestige, some on an attractive play style, some on an attractive manager, some on ethics.
- Rise of complicated contracts. Because top clubs can’t compete on just money for talent. Stuff like building houses for parents, paying the tuition of agent’s kids, flying player’s dogs out to disneyland, etc will become more common in players’ contracts.
- Ligue 1, Bundesliga, and Serie A fans will increasingly clamor for more foreign investors to try to break up the top clubs’ monopoly on talent.
- Keeping talented players will get increasingly difficult for big clubs that have well defined wage structures and retain talent based on just prestige. Think Bayern, Juventus.
- Evolution of the role of the referee in the Premier League. When two top clubs become almost inseparable based on amount spent, coaching strength, talented players available etc, the quality of the referee might be the only separable factor. There will be enormous pressure on refs to be perfect especially in big games. There will be increased calls to automate more of the referees decisions. Goal line tech arrived a few years ago, VAR is coming next season. Expect more of these technologies.