Soccernomics by Simon Kuper, Stefan Szymanski Page A
Authors: Simon Kuper, Stefan Szymanski
Tags: General, Psychology, Self-Help, Personal Growth, Social Psychology, Sports & Recreation, Football, Soccer
Ads: Link
winning “is simply a matter of figuring out the odds, and exploiting the laws of probability. . . . To get worked up over plays, or even games, is as unproductive as a casino manager worrying over the outcomes of individual pulls of the slot machines.”)
Aulas thinks that rationality in soccer works more or less like this: If you buy good players for less than they are worth, you will win more games. You will then have more money to buy better players for less than they are worth. The better players will win you more matches, and that will attract more fans (and thus more money), because Aulas spotted early that most soccer fans everywhere are much more like shoppers than like religious believers: if they can get a better experience some-G E N T L E M E N P R E F E R B L O N D S
67
where new, they will go there. He told us, “We sold 110,000 replica shirts last season. This season we are already at 200,000. I think Olympique Lyon has become by far the most beloved club in France.”
Polls suggest he is right: in Sport+Markt’s survey of European supporters in 2008, Lyon emerged as the country’s most popular club just ahead of Olympique Marseille. This popularity was a new phenomenon. In 2002, when Lyon first became champion of France, the over-riding French emotion toward the club had still been: “Whatever.” The editor of France Football magazine complained around that time that when Lyon won the title, his magazine didn’t sell. But from 2002 to 2008 the club won the title every year—the longest period of domination of any club in any of Europe’s five biggest national leagues ever—
and many French fans began to care about it.
With more fans, Lyon makes more money. On match days now you can get a haircut at an official OL salon, drink an OL Beaujolais at an OL café, book your holiday at an OL travel agency, and take an OL taxi to the game—and many people do. Lyon uses that money to buy better players.
The club now survives the winter in the Champions League almost every season, which makes Lyon one of the sixteen best clubs in Europe. Aulas says it is only a matter of time before it wins the Champions League. “We know it will happen; we don’t know when it will happen. It’s a necessary step to achieve a growth in merchandising.”
The cup with the big ears would cap perhaps the most remarkable rise in soccer history. And for all Aulas’s “OL mineral water,” what made it possible was the transfer market. On that warm winter’s afternoon in Lyon, Aulas told us, “We will invest better than Chelsea, Arsenal, or Real Madrid. We will make different strategic choices. For instance, we won’t try to have the best team on paper in terms of brand.
We will have the best team relative to our investment.” Here are Lyon’s rules of the transfer market:
Use the wisdom of crowds . When Lyon is thinking of signing a player, a group of men sits down to debate the transfer. Aulas is there, and so is Bernard Lacombe, once a bull-like center forward for Lyon and 68
France, and for most of the past twenty years the club’s “technical director.” Lacombe is known for having the best pair of eyes in French soccer. He coached Lyon from 1996 to 2000, but Aulas clearly figured out that if you have someone with his knack for spotting the right transfer, you want to keep him at the club forever rather than make his job contingent on four lost matches. The same went for Peter Taylor at Forest.
Whoever happens to be Lyon’s head coach at the moment sits in on the meeting too, and so will four or five other coaches. “We have a group that gives its advice,” Aulas explains. “In England the manager often does it alone. In France it’s often the technical director.”
Like Lyon, the Oakland A’s sidelined their manager, too. Like Lyon, the A’s understood that he was merely “a middle manager” obsessed with the very short term. The A’s let him watch baseball’s annual draft.
They didn’t
Aulas thinks that rationality in soccer works more or less like this: If you buy good players for less than they are worth, you will win more games. You will then have more money to buy better players for less than they are worth. The better players will win you more matches, and that will attract more fans (and thus more money), because Aulas spotted early that most soccer fans everywhere are much more like shoppers than like religious believers: if they can get a better experience some-G E N T L E M E N P R E F E R B L O N D S
67
where new, they will go there. He told us, “We sold 110,000 replica shirts last season. This season we are already at 200,000. I think Olympique Lyon has become by far the most beloved club in France.”
Polls suggest he is right: in Sport+Markt’s survey of European supporters in 2008, Lyon emerged as the country’s most popular club just ahead of Olympique Marseille. This popularity was a new phenomenon. In 2002, when Lyon first became champion of France, the over-riding French emotion toward the club had still been: “Whatever.” The editor of France Football magazine complained around that time that when Lyon won the title, his magazine didn’t sell. But from 2002 to 2008 the club won the title every year—the longest period of domination of any club in any of Europe’s five biggest national leagues ever—
and many French fans began to care about it.
With more fans, Lyon makes more money. On match days now you can get a haircut at an official OL salon, drink an OL Beaujolais at an OL café, book your holiday at an OL travel agency, and take an OL taxi to the game—and many people do. Lyon uses that money to buy better players.
The club now survives the winter in the Champions League almost every season, which makes Lyon one of the sixteen best clubs in Europe. Aulas says it is only a matter of time before it wins the Champions League. “We know it will happen; we don’t know when it will happen. It’s a necessary step to achieve a growth in merchandising.”
The cup with the big ears would cap perhaps the most remarkable rise in soccer history. And for all Aulas’s “OL mineral water,” what made it possible was the transfer market. On that warm winter’s afternoon in Lyon, Aulas told us, “We will invest better than Chelsea, Arsenal, or Real Madrid. We will make different strategic choices. For instance, we won’t try to have the best team on paper in terms of brand.
We will have the best team relative to our investment.” Here are Lyon’s rules of the transfer market:
Use the wisdom of crowds . When Lyon is thinking of signing a player, a group of men sits down to debate the transfer. Aulas is there, and so is Bernard Lacombe, once a bull-like center forward for Lyon and 68
France, and for most of the past twenty years the club’s “technical director.” Lacombe is known for having the best pair of eyes in French soccer. He coached Lyon from 1996 to 2000, but Aulas clearly figured out that if you have someone with his knack for spotting the right transfer, you want to keep him at the club forever rather than make his job contingent on four lost matches. The same went for Peter Taylor at Forest.
Whoever happens to be Lyon’s head coach at the moment sits in on the meeting too, and so will four or five other coaches. “We have a group that gives its advice,” Aulas explains. “In England the manager often does it alone. In France it’s often the technical director.”
Like Lyon, the Oakland A’s sidelined their manager, too. Like Lyon, the A’s understood that he was merely “a middle manager” obsessed with the very short term. The A’s let him watch baseball’s annual draft.
They didn’t
Similar Books
