Higher School of Economics: football defenders are underestimated by the labor market

Irina Mishina

The Moneyball phenomenon (literally - the effect of the money ball) was first introduced to the study of the cost of baseball players in the United States. The researchers tried to identify the characteristics and skills of players that increase the chances of winning, but are not valued by the market. Recently, employees of the HSE Sports Research Laboratory Inna Zaitseva and Daniil Shaposhnikov studied how this phenomenon works in the football market. It turned out that football defenders are underestimated by the market compared to attacking players. They earn lower salaries on average and are less likely to win prestigious awards such as the Ballon d'Or. The main reason defenders are underestimated is that their defensive efforts in the game are more difficult to observe than spectacular offensive performances.

“A successful attack becomes a spectacular event with a specific result - a goal scored, and a successful defense ends with a goal not scored. Perhaps the market ignores the value of the players' efforts in defense, since a goal that is not scored is less spectacular”, - Inna Zaitseva, a teacher at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the Higher School of Economics, explained to NI.

However, football rules suggest that both goals scored and goals not conceded are equally important to victory. Therefore, the predominance of payment in favor of the attacking players contradicts the principle of efficiency from the point of view of the "productivity theory", when all factors are paid according to the contribution to the overall result. The efficiency of the team's spending in this case can be improved by redistributing the budget, economists say.

To test what is really going on, the HSE researchers looked at two sets of data from the German Bundesliga. The scientists built two models. One of them evaluated the contribution of defensive and attacking actions to the success of the team, and the other - the contribution of defensive and attacking actions to the market value of the players. The parameters in the study were the distance that the players run, their age, the number of passes, the number of fouls, the positions of the players, the number of appearances on the field per season. The results of the analysis showed an imbalance in the assessment of these efforts. It turned out that the contribution of defensive actions to the team's victory is 75% greater than the contribution of these actions to the market value.

Recall that the TOP-3 of the best football defenders of the 21st century looks like this:

1. Sergio Ramos, Spain; 2. Lucas Hernandez, France; 1. Philipp Lamm, Germany.

Known as the best football defender of a generation and one of the greatest defenders of all time, Philipp Lamm has a large following on social media and this is one of the main reasons he attracts sponsors. With a net worth of 100 million euros, he is currently ranked #1 in the world's top 10 richest football defenders of the 21st century. Lucas is a French professional footballer who plays as a centre-back for Bundesliga club Bayern Munich and the French national team. Lucas Hernandez makes huge money from his social media accounts and is known as the richest footballer. His net worth is 80.87 million euros.

But even these figures pale when compared with the cost of attackers. So, for Lionel Messi , the French club PSG offered 250 million euros. And the transfer of Neymar to Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) from Barcelona cost 222 million euros in 2017; Neymar's salary at PSG is £28m.