Successful players don’t always make successful managers, Sparky

by Martin McCutcheon

Mark Hughes has begun his first season at Fulham, his third club as manager. The question is: was he too successful as a player to make it as a successful manager? He scored over 150 goals for 7 clubs, winning 2 Premier League titles, 4 FA Cups, 3 League Cups and two UEFA Cup Winners Cups along the way. But can he translate this success into management?

He was primarily guided, after all, by England’s most successful manager, Alex Ferguson. Ferguson has won 11 titles with United, two Champions League titles and 5 FA Cups. He also scored over 150 goals, but won only two titles as a player. Like Fergie, Brian Clough was a prolific striker scoring 251 goals (see chart). But he won no titles as a player. He did go on to win two league titles and back to back European Cups as manager, though.

Jose Mourinho also won no titles as a player; he scored barely a handful of goals, played less than 100 matches, but has won 6 league titles in 3 countries, including 2 Champions League titles with Porto and Inter. We’ve seen this change of fortune from player to manager before: Bob Paisley won only one title as a Liverpool player, but led them to 6 League titles and 3 European Cups as a manager. A contemporary of Hughes’s playing era Ruud Gullit won the European Cup in 1989 and1990, and 6 domestic league titles, but as a manager has won only one FA Cup.

While scoring lots of goals brings mixed success, great managers didn’t always win titles as players. It does not bode well for Sparky. Nor Fulham.

An interesting tale on resale value declining as players move into the bigger leagues

UEFA's first report on the European Club Footballing Landscape provides an interesting picture on the valuation of players and their expected resale value across European leagues. If we compare the clubs' valuation of players on their balance sheets, it is not particularly surprising to find that English clubs are at the top with combined player assets of €1.24 billion with Spain coming in second at €985 million and Italy in third with €821 million. But it's interesting to then compare this to how the players' agents estimate player resale values. England again comes in top with the player resale value totaling €2.76 billion, Spain at €2.31 billion and Italy on €2.15 billion. This represents a substantial premium on the clubs' balance sheet estimate of player assets, which probably more closely reflects original transfer value.

Although there appears to be significant resale premium in the bigger leagues with English clubs expecting a profit of 123%, Spanish clubs at 135% and Italian clubs at 162%, the real profit comes in the smaller European leagues with Scotland clubs facing expected profits of 491% and Turkish clubs at 445%. In the figure below, clubs' valuation of player assets on their balance sheets is represented by the white circle with agents' player valuation the larger green circle. Although the clubs' total player assets on their balance sheets declines rapidly as we move down through the smaller leagues, the agents' valuation of players does not decline as quickly. This points to expected profit on player resale increasing as we move down through the smaller leagues.

What does this tell us? Probably an expected story. The smaller European leagues provide the training ground for the best players before moving to more well known leagues in England, Spain and Italy for significant transfer fees. But once players get to England, Spain and Italy, there is little opportunity to transfer to bigger clubs; and for English, Spanish and Italian clubs, there are little options to make a profit on players by receiving a larger transfer fee than what they paid.