Had to kill some time and looked up an article (a few years old) about Brentford’s model. I think the ‘B’ team is fairly well known, although I didn’t realise exactly how they used it, but also they use a ‘moneyball’ approach (if you haven’t watched that film you should). Anyway, on a few threads I’ve read recently, it appears we have some forum members who are pretty knowledgeable on the game, clearly do a lot of research and watch a lot of games etc. So I was wondering what other models there are being used out there in the footballing world? And as an add on to that, do we have a unique ‘model’ in reality? I know it’s been mocked the last few seasons, but overall it would appear to be fairly successful. Are we changing / evolving this model? I think I know most of what we do, but maybe there’s snippets I, and maybe others, wouldn’t be aware of?
Model 1: Have loads of dosh and splash on top talent Model 2: Buy low, sell high Model 3: Generate youth players and combine with Model 2. We are Model 2. Would be great if we could be Model 3. We do not have a unique model at all.
Model 4 - sail through the "fit and proper person" test without showing any understanding of football (or sometimes even that you have any money) and bankrupt an institution that's been around for over a hundred years. Model 5 - buy a club and absolutely load it with debt that is leveraged against its own assets with very little risk to the wealthy purchasers.
We (the owners) supposedly have a great scouting network, which does occasionally come up trumps but someone posted the championship squad values the other day and Brentford have a more valuable squad than us. Considering they’ve never played in the PL their scouting/moneyball approach is clearly significantly better than ours. They’re able to generate £30/£40m a season from players who have never played in the top tier when we struggle to do that with players who have played a league higher.
Yeah but then look deeper into the lists and there's lots to disagree with. It's basically just a load of made up numbers spat out by an algorithm.
If you happen to subscribe to The Athletic, they have had very good in-depth articles recently both on Barnsley's ownership group and their history/the clubs they own across Europe, and also on the Pozzo as owners themselves, but (thankfully) solely through the prism of Udinese and some of the history and the way they work there.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/synd...eat-football-teams-with-huge-budgets.amp.html Here’s the article I read.
It used to be unique but it's no longer unique. There was an interesting quote in The Athletic piece on Udinese the other day about how Udinese used to have a room of VHS recorders and a bank of TV screens and would record games from around the world, the guy from Udinese described it as "We had WyScout before WyScout was even created". Now every football club has easily accessible footage of every league around the world. On WyScout you have age filters as well so it takes less than a minute to be watching clips of every 18 year old who's playing regularly in Chile - this has essentially destroyed their main advantage as bigger clubs with more money (looking at you Chelsea + City) have been scouring these traditionally undervalued markets that the Pozzos have been successful in. However the new work permit rules have opened up a potentially fantastic new model and I believe there will be a goldrush heading there soon - Africa. Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and South Africa are the only African leagues on the football video platforms, which means to scout Africa successfully you either need boots on the ground to scout in person or a feeder club. There's a few successful feeder club systems currently in effect in Africa. Metz in France have a partnership with Generation Foot in Senegal, meaning Metz essentially get first dibs on any player from Generation Foot, for no transfer fee - however Metz do have to pay the monthly costs of the club. The benefits far outweigh the monthly costs though, with Metz receiving our own Ismaila Sarr, along with a certain Sadio Mane and other Premier League alumni Diafra Sakho (West Ham), Papiss Cisse (ex Newcastle) all going from Generation Foot to Metz along with numerous others going on to play in Germany etc. That's an insane talent pipeline to be able to call upon, with 4 of their current first team coming from this academy. It works well for them and I imagine it can't cost much at all, they've recently extended this deal to last for the next 10 years. Right To Dream academy is another - an academy setup in Ghana by an ex-Man Utd scout is probably the most prestigious academy in Africa with 30,000 trialists every year. All students get education alongside a fantastic football education. The owner was frustrated at losing the kids at the end of their scholarship for peanuts so bought a club in Denmark (FC Nordsjaelland) in 2015 where the players get a taste of football at a half decent level. Last summer they sold Mohammed Kudus to Ajax for €9m and will likely sell Kamaldeen Sulemana to a big club for a similar fee in the summer. Red Bull have focused around getting boots on the ground, Amadou Haidara was scouting for RB Salzburg whilst playing in Mali, they snapped him and he was fantastic earning his move to Leipzig. Salzburg currently have 4 Malians, 2 Zambians, 3 Ghanaians and a Nigerian on their books through scouting on the ground. It's previously been very hard for UK clubs to get work permits as it's been dependent on transfer fees and international appearances, however the new work permit system means a season playing in a half decent league (Belgium, Holland, Portugal etc) will get them a work permit after a season. Tl;dr: The smart clubs will be descending upon Africa very shortly - let's get a long time partnership setup asap.
Thanks for this, good read and yes I’ve always felt that in some of these under developed countries with large populations there must be a load of potential.
I listened to him interviewed on Talksport a few weeks ago, their story is incredible! The fact that they started by hosting the 16 initial successful trialists in their home with them for the year and educating them there is insanely impressive; makes his/their success hard to begrudge, for sure.
I think that's what the City Football Group have been doing (but with developed) countries as well, expanding into countries that are not traditional footballing powerhouses (Australia, USA, India) but where football is booming in popularity could prove a great talent source in the future as well.
You beat me to it! I was going to say my favourite football "business" model is Nordsjaelland and the RTD Academy. Genuinely giving West African children a chance of a lifetime. 61 of 144 students are now professional footballers, 43 of which are internationals. Phenomenal achievement.
