The 348th edition of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presents the forecasts for the 2021/22 season at the level of the five major European leagues. The statistical model used for this purpose includes the players’ experience, transfer fee investments to assemble squads, as well as each team’s performance in the last 365 days.

With respect to 2020/21, the only change from a champions perspective is supposed to take place in Spain, with Real Madrid finishing ahead of Atlético and Barcelona. In England, the top four would be the same as last season, with Tottenham fifth ahead of Everton. Norwich City, Watford and Newcastle United are the main candidates for relegation.

In Italy, Inter Milan would outrank Napoli and city rivals Milan AC, with Juventus only sixth. Wolfsburg are the most likely runners-up in the German Bundesliga, ahead of Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen. In France, after Paris St-Germain, we would find the two Olympique (Marseille and Lyon in this order), while St-Etienne is a serious candidate for relegation.

Issue number 347 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post ranks teams from 36 domestic leagues worldwide – 32 in Europe and 4 in the Americas – according to the number of passes made per match during current season as per data provided by our partners InStat. Paris St-Germain tops the rankings with an average of 738 passes.

In terms of the percentage of passes made in the opposite half, the Ukrainians of Shakhtar Donetsk are clearly at the top with an astonishing 68%, ahead of Manchester City (60%) and Ajax (57%). At the bottom of the rankings are Cosenza (22%) and two big-5 league teams: Norwich City and Elche (both 25%). As for the rate of accurate passes, the values vary between 92.6% for Paris St-Germain and Lazio, down to just 66.1% for Salernitana.

Regarding the four non-European leagues included in the sample, the highest figure for passes was measured for Flamengo (606, 87.7% of which accurate), while the lowest was observed for the Mexican side Atlético San Luis (336, 76.8%). Flamengo tops the table also for the proportion of passes in the opposite half alongside the Colombians of Deportes Quindío (50.3%). Another Brazilian team, Grêmio, complete the podium.

Issue number 346 of the Weekly Post presents the annual CIES Football Observatory analysis on big-5 league teams’ transfer fee spending to assemble their squads. With an estimated €1.08 billion invested to sign their current players (possible add-ons included), Manchester City remains at the top of the rankings. However, with respect to the start of the 2020/21 season, the gap with Manchester United went down by almost €140 million: from €192M to just about €58M.

The Manchester teams are the only ones to have spent over a billion euro in transfer indemnities to make up their current squads. Paris St-Germain complete the podium (€957M, + €69M with respect to the previous season), followed by Real Madrid (€787M, + €79M) and Chelsea (€780M, + €17M). Three further English Premier League teams (Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham), as well as Barcelona and Juventus, also paid more than €500 M in transfer fees to assemble their squads.

Per league, the average transfer expenditure per team to sign current squad members vary between €410 million for the English Premier League (with a minimum of about €87M for Norwich City) and €131M for both the French Ligue 1 (with a minimum for Clermont Foot) and the German Bundesliga (with a minimum for Bochum). The data for 2020/21 are available here.

The 67th edition of the CIES Football Observatory Monthly Report analyses from an economic perspective transfer operations carried out by big-5 league clubs during the last decade. It notably shows that the declining trend in investments after the health crisis has stopped. During the last transfer window, clubs from the five major European leagues spent 2% more than in the previous summer.

The study also shows that the pandemic has reinforced the domination of English Premier League clubs on the transfer market. The percentage of spending of the latter in comparison to the total big-5 league clubs’ transfer expenditure has increased from 35% between January 2012 and January 2020 to over 45% for the three post-COVID transfer windows.

The percentage of investments of the ten clubs having spent the most has also increased between these periods (from 33% to 35% per transfer window on average), as that of the ten most expensive transfers in comparison to the total (from 30% to 33%). All the indicators show a trend towards a concentration of spending from the richest clubs, in particular the wealthiest Premier League ones.

Six English teams are at the top of the rankings for the most negative post-pandemic net transfer spending, with Manchester United (-€217 million) ahead of Chelsea (-€205 M) and Arsenal (-€194 M). Since the COVID crisis, English top division clubs recorded a total deficit of almost two billion euro in transfer operations. Conversely, Spanish Liga teams registered a positive net balance (+€200 million).

Within the context of a general crisis, the English Premier League is the only competition where a majority of clubs invest massively on the transfer market. This allowed many teams from the other big-5 leagues, and, in a cascade effect, further down, to limit the impact of the health crisis and shows the importance of a global transfer system as it currently exists.

At the same time, the dependence of a growing number of clubs even within the wealthiest leagues on transfer incomes highlights the weakness of the current professional football economic system. The survival of more and more teams pivots indeed on the profits generated through the transfer of their best players. This situation is both financially dangerous and sportingly limiting.

FULL REPORT

Age categories in youth football are generally defined from January 1st onwards. Issue number 345 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post analyses the month of birth of 43,938 players fielded in 2021 in 119 leagues worldwide. The study confirms the relative age effect, i.e. the advantage to be born early in the year to make a career.

In total, 31.2% of players in the sample are born in the first trimester of the year. In contrast, only 19.0% are born in the last trimester. Without relative age effect, these proportions should have been around 25%. Per national origin, the stronger concentration of footballers born in the first trimester was measured for the Chinese (43.6%). An over-representation was recorded for 64 of the 67 origins with at least 200 representatives in the sample.

The very low proportion of Japanese born in the first trimester (16.2%) is also the result of a relative age effect. Indeed, in Japan, youth categories start on April 1st. In England, players born in the first trimester are just slightly over-represented (27.1%) insofar as the reference date to define age categories is September 1st.

Issue number 344 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post lists the 100 footballers worldwide who did not yet celebrate their 20th birthday and gained the most experience in official senior matches over the course of the year (minutes weighted by sporting strength of employer clubs or competitions played). The FC Barcelona’s gem Pedri González is clearly at the top of the table ahead of Manchester United’s Mason Greenwood and Ajax’s Ryan Gravenberch.

The Brazilian midfielder Matheus Martinelli (4th) is the best-ranked teenager playing outside of Europe, ahead of the 2003-born Uruguayan Fabricio Díaz from Liverpool Montevideo (7th) and his teammate at Fluminense Lucas Calegari (11th). Apart from Díaz, two other footballers born in 2003 are in the top 10 positions of the rankings: the Englishman Jude Bellingham (Borussia Dortmund) and the German Florian Wirtz (Bayer Leverkusen).

The Paraguayan Julio Enciso (Club Libertad) is the only footballer born in 2004 in the top 100 list. With 22 goals in official senior games in 2021, Benjamin Šeško (Salzburg and Liefering) is the top scorer among players listed. The Slovenian striker outranks the Czech national A-team player Adam Hložek (Sparta Praha), the Uruguayan Matías Arezo (River Plate Montevideo) and the German with Nigerian descent Karim Adeyemi (Salzburg).