Joan Laporta

jamrock

jamrock

Senior Member
In the two years as president of Barça, Laporta has signed a total of 18 footballers with an investment of 225 million euros. Eleven of these players have joined the club at zero cost... although six of them, for different reasons, are no longer in the Blaugrana dressing room. The transformation of the squad has been absolute.

Sport.com

The Great Joan Laporta.
 
P

Porque

Senior Member
AZ are well placed to secure their fifth top-four Eredivisie finish in six seasons. They need four points to guarantee European football once more.

To Beane, it shows that the data analysis methods he used in baseball were transferrable to other sports - something that was proved when he answered Eenhoorn's call.

"The first thing Robert did was to stop losing money," he said. "Unfortunately, the first year is painful because you are selling your best players to make up for the poor decisions made by people who were there before you.

"The little money he did have, he went out and bought two players from the second division that were completely data driven. One was Vincent Janssen, the other was Alireza Jahanbakhsh."

The pair were brought in for less than £1m. Janssen was later sold to Tottenham, Jahanbakhsh to Brighton, for a combined £33m.

...

In football, expected goals have now become a commonplace assessment of a team's performance, in addition to completed passes in the final third and standard shots on and off target.

Yet Beane is clear that data is not everything. He rejects the notion it will drive traditional scouting out of the game.

"If you think of a scout in any sport, you are giving them an impossible job," he said.

"We are going to redefine them. Decision-making in business is all driven by information. There is information I can't get from data. I can't find out what kind of team-mate he is. I can't find out if he stays out all night, what kind of parents he has, what kind of student he was.

"I want scouts to give me information that I can't get. You can build that into your model."

...

However, Beane feels it will take one of those clubs to shake up the elite for a true understanding of what data analysis can provide takes hold across the game.

"The challenge isn't getting the data, it is executing it," he said.

"With data, you might find a 5ft 7in guy, who is undervalued because of his size. You can see he is not 6ft 4in and your eyes stop you no matter what the data says.

"Brentford doesn't win anything. But think of where they were to where they are now and what they are up against. Usually people talk about clubs having a great youth programme. They don't even have a youth programme.

"When one of those clubs starts pushing the top four, five, six, people will change very quickly."

Full article
www.bbc.com

West Ham v AZ Alkmaar: The Dutch Moneyball team chasing Europa Conference victory

West Ham's push for a first European final in 47 years is about to come up against Mr Moneyball himself - as they face an AZ Alkmaar side who have risen with the help of Billy Beane.
www.bbc.com


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Nice article from yesterday. Thought it was best placed here.

Shows there could have been an alternative model than to pull all the levers and then spend alot on signings.

Question is, can it successfully be applied to a top club?
 
jamrock

jamrock

Senior Member
The answer to that is simply no.

Which is why no top team in any sport I can think of has fully & successfully implied a money ball type of approach to winning.

You take pieces of it yes, but implement fully and win? No.
 
Messigician

Messigician

Senior Member
Porque said:
AZ are well placed to secure their fifth top-four Eredivisie finish in six seasons. They need four points to guarantee European football once more.

To Beane, it shows that the data analysis methods he used in baseball were transferrable to other sports - something that was proved when he answered Eenhoorn's call.

"The first thing Robert did was to stop losing money," he said. "Unfortunately, the first year is painful because you are selling your best players to make up for the poor decisions made by people who were there before you.

"The little money he did have, he went out and bought two players from the second division that were completely data driven. One was Vincent Janssen, the other was Alireza Jahanbakhsh."

The pair were brought in for less than £1m. Janssen was later sold to Tottenham, Jahanbakhsh to Brighton, for a combined £33m.

...

In football, expected goals have now become a commonplace assessment of a team's performance, in addition to completed passes in the final third and standard shots on and off target.

Yet Beane is clear that data is not everything. He rejects the notion it will drive traditional scouting out of the game.

"If you think of a scout in any sport, you are giving them an impossible job," he said.

"We are going to redefine them. Decision-making in business is all driven by information. There is information I can't get from data. I can't find out what kind of team-mate he is. I can't find out if he stays out all night, what kind of parents he has, what kind of student he was.

"I want scouts to give me information that I can't get. You can build that into your model."

...

However, Beane feels it will take one of those clubs to shake up the elite for a true understanding of what data analysis can provide takes hold across the game.

"The challenge isn't getting the data, it is executing it," he said.

"With data, you might find a 5ft 7in guy, who is undervalued because of his size. You can see he is not 6ft 4in and your eyes stop you no matter what the data says.

"Brentford doesn't win anything. But think of where they were to where they are now and what they are up against. Usually people talk about clubs having a great youth programme. They don't even have a youth programme.

"When one of those clubs starts pushing the top four, five, six, people will change very quickly."

Full article
www.bbc.com

West Ham v AZ Alkmaar: The Dutch Moneyball team chasing Europa Conference victory

West Ham's push for a first European final in 47 years is about to come up against Mr Moneyball himself - as they face an AZ Alkmaar side who have risen with the help of Billy Beane.
www.bbc.com


---
Nice article from yesterday. Thought it was best placed here.

Shows there could have been an alternative model than to pull all the levers and then spend alot on signings.

Question is, can it successfully be applied to a top club?
Click to expand...

Bro who cares
 
khaled_a_d

khaled_a_d

Senior Member
jamrock said:
The answer to that is simply no.

Which is why no top team in any sport I can think of has fully & successfully implied a money ball type of approach to winning.

You take pieces of it yes, but implement fully and win? No.
Click to expand...

I have to agree with this tbh.
Money ball is difficult when you try to win.
Agents and teams will simply take advantage of you if you try it. There is a price for Barca/Manu/City/RM because of how big you are.
No one is going to see AZ approach and say, let's raise the price for them.

Also, I think levers were inevitable and anyone would have done it, it was a way to pay for mistakes of the past.

A good argument can be had on whether we should have pulled all levers? Or maybe just couple of them was enough and be tight with money, and whether allocation of resources in the transfer window was correct.

But full money ball, or no levers, niether was real option IMO
 
jamrock

jamrock

Senior Member
The sooner fans accept that the levelers were a necessary evil, the better it will be for all involved.

It wasn't simply about buying players, it helped to stabilize the club at a point where we needed it, we got 700m euros I think, and spend about $150m that window on players.

The only way out of the mess we are in for any team that has a bit of gravity around it, is to win, it's that or eventually you will fall in on yourself, you have to grow and expand y
Our way out of the situation we are in, while making structural changes, not austerity our way out, austerity never ever ever ever works.

Lastly, I know as fans we love to think ourselves as some form of super scouts, as we see *insert medium side team here* sign some C rated players we've never heard about and turn them into a very good B/B+ rated player, for peanuts, and while that approach should be admired and adopted where possible.

which to be frank most big teams do, they just approach it through their youth systems by attracting the best young talents available in the game, a team like Brighton can't do, big teams pull in the very best talent at all age levels, so they can only really play in the field of finding the gems that are a bit later in there development that the big boys missed out on.


The full money ball approach at the highest level does not & has never proven to work, you don't win consistently paying small wages & with C+ to B+ players in your squad, it can happen every now & then, see Leicester City & a few more examples sprinkled through football & sports.

But at the end of the day the big boys "brut Force" approach wins.

Ajax & PSV will always be better than AZ, all things being equal.

Which is why Barcelona couldn't standstill and say let's just lose and rebuild for X number of years, because time waits for no one, by the time you're ready to start running again the race is already over.

Unless of course you get a shit top of money from a oil state in which case you can.
 
J

JamDav1982

Senior Member
The levers were to sign players even if did use it to also restructure some other debts.

Laporta himself said the levers would not have been pulled had the league rules not needed it to sign those players.

The actual fees spent is not the relevant part on what the levers allowed them to spend on players it is the impact on the books and FFP.

Lewa cost 50m but in reality his cost on books is 100m player on 10m a season. Same with Kessie etc who are equiivlant of 25m player on 5m a year etc.

The money last year could have been a lot better spent but the players bought bar Lewa were still good value.

That on top of a base of better players already there gives Barca a good squad and much more should be expected next season on how many fronts can compete and league win built on in Europe.
 
P

Porque

Senior Member
Since Xavi took over last season this is the team finished 5 points behind Madrid (down from 13 or so when KDawg left).

More importantly after the Jan transfer window where we moneyballed it (had Ferran not been signed) the club accumulated the most points in LaLiga.

So say we used the levers to give rocketfuel to the debt coverage and to level out future FFP, and continued to be shrewd in the market, could we have achieved as much without the Lewa, Kounde, Ferran, Raphi spending?

Considering our trajectory showed we were already ahead of Madrid with the signings of Adama, Auba and injury returns.

In that scenario, right now we would be stabilized and would not have to reduce 200m in cap margin this summer as we would already be adapted.

As the key quote in the article says.

"The first thing Robert did was to stop losing money," he said. "Unfortunately, the first year is painful because you are selling your best players to make up for the poor decisions made by people who were there before you.

This is the point we chose to go big instead.

And then amending the subsequent quote to fit a club of our stature would be something like the following.

"The little money he did have, we went out and bought players from the free agents that were completely data driven. The other signings were data driven high potential performers from lesser markets"
 
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iniestaGOAT

iniestaGOAT

Senior Member
Andresito said:
Should add this line as your signature.
Click to expand...

WELL SAID

I HAVE READ THAT BUM REPEAT THAT SHIT OVER 100 TIMES IN THE LAST FEW WEEKS ITSELF

BUT WHAT THAT BUM DOES NOT REALIZE IS LEWA WAS SIGNED FOR OTHER PURPOSES THAN JUST BEING A GOOD VALUE

HE IS THE FACE OF THE TEAM

HE IS THE MAN

HE IS THE BRAND

HE IS THE NAME ON THE SHIRT
 
jamrock

jamrock

Senior Member
If we are following what he's saying word for word.

Re " sell our best player"

Let's say we did that, which would be a terrible idea, but let's say we did, to to follow the though experiment.

We don't sell those players (Araujo and the likes), then go out and moneyball it to find players to fill out the squad and then win la Liga..

5% chance of that happen.


If we keep our best players, and then try to players for a reasonable amount of money, the we could win la Liga.

Which is what we did in actuality.

If we are looking solely at the summer, our net spend was less that 40m euros, we spent 130m and got in 5/6 players including free signings.

Everyone may not like all the players we got, but their is no perfect transfers window.

I don't know what anyone else could realistically expect, unless they are in the sell our best players and rebuild over the long term camp.

Which for a team like us was never or should never happen.
 
jamrock

jamrock

Senior Member
Nah our NetSpend in the summer definitely was not 118m euros.

That was discussed multiple times during the Summer.

I can't be bothered to do the maths right now, but I'm pretty sure it was around the 40m mark, if not during the summer then since Laporta took over one or the other.

Unless my memory is completely shot lol.

But I'm sure it was about that #, even Mr cost on the books, was giving the club credit for their net spend, he won't say that now though lol.
 
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