Finding a Player's Value

Soccer-Stadium-Seats

As everyone in football knows, transfers make up a huge part of the industry. One can easily see the amount of money spent moving players from team to team through one transfer window, in the men's game. Although there isn't as much money in the women’s game, the principles for bringing in the right players are obviously the same. In short, clubs want to make sure they’re bringing in the right players for their club to succeed.

Most fans pay attention to the top 5-6 men’s leagues in Europe, but most of the exchanging happens in the lower leagues because, quite frankly, there are more players. But there in lies the issue. There is a disproportionate amount of resources to the amount of players that could be signed because of the lack of funding. Therefore it can be difficult to accurately assess players and to even have a starting point. That starting point is finding a player’s monetary value.


You can get a player’s monetary value if you have the following information and/or resources:

  1. Your League’s Average Salary and Transfer Value per Position:
    This gives you a reference point for each position


  2. An “On the Ball” Data Source:
    This gives you the ability to know how good a player is relative to the positional average


  3. League Comparison:
    This gives you the ability to convert from one league to another

Resource-Explainer

The above visual shows what the different resources allow you to do



That’s it! From these resources we can determine a player’s Monetary Value to, at the very least, understand if they’re good enough for the league and/or club you’re in. But, of course, in order to actually find a player's Monetary Value, we need to do a few calculations and quantify four things from the three resources above. Here are those four things:


  1. Total Output Value (TOV - Basically Technical Proficiency)

  2. Dollar Value per Minute (DVpM - Dollar Value per minute Played)

  3. Minutes Played Value (MPV - Total Value of Minutes Played)

  4. League Comparison Coefficient (LCC - A number that converts one league level to another)


Now in order to find the Monetary Value we need to do this:

(TOV + MPV) x LCC = Monetary Value


And voila! Now we have a good baseline of, not only how good they are, but how much you should be paying them.




Here's an example:


Let’s say you’re in a league where the gross average salary of a Striker is $100,000, per year. (A)

Using the Data Source (B) you have, and after various calculations, it gives you a player’s three various scores to indicate they’re well above average. Let’s say for simplicity sake, they’re around 1 standard deviation from the average, or about the 84th percentile of the league. That’s a great player! That alone gives you a TOV of $100,000 (1) For what it’s worth, if they were around the 69th percentile, their TOV is around $50,000. Furthermore, if they are bang average, their TOV is $0.

Next we need to find the DVpM (2). If the league average is 1300 minutes played, then the Dollar Value per Minute is $77 dollars. This is because if the player’s TOV is average, or $0, we need to be able to get to the $100,000 by the minutes played. So, if a player plays 1300 minutes, then we get our $100,000 by multiplying the $77 by the 1300 minutes. I mean, experience playing professional football is worth something, right?

So now we need the MPV (3) and the player in question has played about 2100 minutes. The MPV is simply 2100 x $77, which is $161,700.

The last thing we need is a League Comparison Coefficient (C and 4). This is a bit difficult. You can do this by using lots of historical data to come up with something yourself, or use 21st Club data. So, let’s say the league which this player is coming from is about 0.75 to your league’s 1.

Now we have everything and plug everything into the equation I outlined above:

(TOV + MPV) x LCC = Monetary Value

($100,000 + $161,700) x 0.75 = $196,275S



So there’s your baseline! As a club, you now know how much to ROUGHLY pay them and how good they can be relative to your league.

When it comes to scouting, this is a good baseline if you decide to go about it from a Data-Based Scouting route. The great thing about this way of analyzing players can be done at any level of football. You can build a wide net and start to do your first level of filtering. From there, there’s much more to think about like, True Wages, Value Analysis, Player Types, Player Similarities, Player to Team Cohesion, etc., etc.

I hope this gives a good understanding of evaluating players as a first step. I’m happy to provide a more thorough analysis, along with other analyses, to your club, league, or organization, upon request.

I encourage you to check out my consulting page, here.