The World Cup is long over, time for an honest evaluation of English players

The World Cup in Qatar is now three months past. Enough time, me thinks, to get real about the quality of English footballers.

First, let me state that I am impressed with how good the English national team is at the moment. Lots of young talented players in the team and I think they can continue to do well in the next few years. However, once again the team didn’t make it past the quarter finals losing to a brilliant France. This makes me wonder if English footballers are overvalued.

My classic case study is Jack Grealish. A player who is, in my opinion, a little bit above average as a winger was assessed to be worth some £58 million by Transfermarkt in 2021 when he left Aston Villa. Why anybody would pay £100 million for this guy is beyond me but somebody at Manchester City thought he was worth that kind of money. I think in terms of goals alone, he certainly isn’t worth half as much since he scored only 4 goals in 36 matches for Manchester City since 2021 and 2 goals in 29 matches for the England national team.

But I digress. This kind of excessive valuation attached to English players is a systematic effect as Adrian Bell, Chris Brooks and Rohan Brooks document. They looked at all the players in the five big leagues in Europe (England, Spain, Germany, Italy, and France) and compared the valuations achieved by players in these leagues with the performance measured by a series of objective statistical measures for each position. Comparing more than 2,000 players they find a striking effect. While the performance of English players in Europe is on average no different from the performance of non-English players, their valuations are about 40% higher.

Performance vs. valuation of English footballers

Source: Bell et al. (2022)

But why would clubs overpay by 40% to acquire an English player? There are several factors that play into this phenomenon. First, the Premier League is so flush with money that every player who plays in that league already demands higher valuations. And since more English players play in England than abroad, this creates an artificial premium for these players.

But there is more to this story. The study finds that English players are on average more likely to play as strikers and in attacking positions rather than as defenders or goalkeepers. In fact, if you look at the performance of English vs. non-English players by position, one finds that while English attackers are slightly, though not statistically significantly, better than non-English attackers, English goalkeepers are total rubbish. They are on average 10% worse than their non-English counterparts. And because attackers and attacking midfielders command a higher price than defenders or goalkeepers, English players on average cost more than non-English players.

In other words, English players are the football equivalent of investing in glamour stocks. Shiny investments with a bright future that all too often fails to materialise.

Speaking of which, the past World Cup has had one leitmotiv, in my opinion. The saying “offence wins games, defence wins tournaments” has been confirmed in Qatar once again. Among the many surprises, it is clear to me that the positive surprises came mostly from teams like Morocco or Argentina with strong defence that didn’t allow many goals. Meanwhile, teams with a great offence didn’t go as far as many expected and teams like Germany with a decent offensive line-up but absolutely dreadful defence performed very poorly. This is all the more frustrating to me since Germany historically always had great defenders and goalkeepers.

If I were a team manager or the head of a national FA trying to design a successful youth programme that will lead to international trophies in the future, I know what I would do. Instead of focussing on strikers and offensive players, make sure you have many really good defenders and goalkeepers.

And if I were a team manager for a top league club, I would make sure I pay top dollar for defenders and goalkeepers and do not overpay for strikers. But alas, this kind of business has gone out of fashion in an era where most managers want to play offensive football with lots of possession. But what is all that possession worth if you don’t have decent defenders and the opponents can score a goal at every counterattack?

The problem with overpaying for strikers and attacking midfielders is not just that it is easy to overpay for them. The problem is also that if you pay £100m for someone like Jack Grealish, the expectations from fans and the public rise enormously. Surely, the kid must be something special to demand such valuations. And where expectations are anchored too high, disappointment inevitably follows.