Does spending large amounts of money on players buy you titles?

1. Introduction

In todays football world we see player change teams all the time and many of them for large amounts of money, too large for some. And teams to that in the believe that buying player which often are really good players, players that can change a football game on their very own, Cristiano Ronaldo and Fernando Torres are great examples of those kinds of exchanges in football and they also represent both sides of the spectrum. What I mean by both sides of the spectrum is that it is not always that these transactions pay off like planned because most of the time people that are bought for 50 million pounds like Fernando Torres from Liverpool to Chelsea, Torres was brilliant with Liverpool and was one of their best players for several years scoring many important goals for the club which got him some attention from other clubs including Chelsea. Last january Chelsea bought Torres for 50 million pounds, since them Torres has played close to 30 games and only scored 1 goal. 1!!! Fernando Torres is a world class striker whose job is to score goals and often times he is one of the best at doing that but since joining Chelsea something has gone wrong, could it be the pressure of having 50 million pounds worth of pressure on your back or just that he is not worth 50 million pounds. Cristiano Ronaldo however doesn't let that or any other reason affect him. Ronaldo was bought from Man Utd to Real Madrid for a staggering 80 million euros, he has been one of the best players in the world since joining Madrid (just like he was at Man Utd). So those are prime examples of players worth these amounts of cash and players not worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Teams that spend a lot of money

 There are a few teams that don't seem to have any limits on their spendings and that all comes from extremly rich indivituals that seem to be playing the real life version of Football Manager and some just buy players with even talking much about it with the manager or getting his approval and that again brings Fernando Torres up as a great example. At that time Carlo Ancelotti was the manager of Chelsea and the owner was and is to this day Roman Abramovich. Torres was Abramovich's idea and bought Torres himself for the team and because of that Abramovich was kind of forced to play him because of Abramovich, the price tag and just because the fans would get so excited by the new signing and wanting to see him play that it had effects on Ancelottis tactics and plans for the future games.

The teams that are spending the most are Barcelona, Real Madrid, Man City and Chelsea and the list will get longer as time goes on because there are so many teams today that are starting to get fueled by new billionare owners, teams like Paris Saint-Germain and Malaga FC, these are teams that were bought by new owners sometime before last summer and spent a lot of money on new players this summer.  This is getting more and more common and many believe it is ruining the sport so UEFA is cosidering a new law that teams can't spend more money on players than they make in advertisments or they make in a year so if that law gets accepted many of these teams will be in big trouble. Real Madrid is not owned by some billionare but is owned by the city of Madrid and gets a lot of money from the city. Barcelona would probably be the only team that wouldn't get affected by the UEFA law should pass because they have a deal with Quatar Foundation worth 125 million euros which could just save them in the future.

 

3. Teams that don't spend a lot of money

teams like Athletico Madrid, Arsenal, Man Utd and Tottenham are all teams that have done a marvelous job in their countries without spending big money on maybe just a couple of players. Arsenal and Man Utd are perhaps the richer teams of that group and are on the same level as Barcelona, Chelsea and Real Madrid but they seem to have managed with a squad which didn't cost 100s of millions of pounds or euros. This summer Man Utd bought players for around 60 million pounds which is a lot of money yes but they don't do that a lot and when they spend those amounts they spend it on players that they need and know will fit in. And maybe most importantly they don't necesserily buy players that are well known for maybe 30 millions but buy players like Javier Hernandez for example and Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo was unkown and only 17-18 years old when Man Utd bought him for 12 million pounds. 12 million!! that is nothing compared to how insanely good he became and was eventually sold for close to 7 times more than that. Javier Hernandez or Chicharito as he is known as was bought last summer before the World Cup for only 7 million. And if we compare that to Torres it is the the transfer of the century. Last year Hernandez scored between 15-20 goals last season while Torres scored less than 10 goals and all of them except for one in his Liverpool days.Tottenham also made a dream transfer last summer when they bought Rafael Van Der Vaart for only 8 million from Real Madrid. But what makes these teams so impressive is that they buy players that are pretty much unknown for not much money and in a few years they have become world known stars and class players. players like Sergio Aguero, Cesc Fabregas, Cristiano Ronaldo, Javier Hernandez, just to name a few.

 4. Worlds most expensive players

Top 10 Overall Transfers

• 1. Cristiano Ronaldo: Manchester United to Real Madrid – £80m (2009)
• 2. Zlatan Ibrahimovic: Inter Milan to Barcelona – £60.7m (2009)
• 3. Kaka: AC Milan to Real Madrid – £56m (2009)
• 4. Fernando Torres: Liverpool to Chelsea – £50m (2011)
• 5. Zinedine Zidane: Juventus to Real Madrid – £45.62m (2001)
• 6. Luis Figo: Barcelona to Real Madrid – £37m (2000)
• 7. Javier Pastore: Palermo to Paris Saint-Germain – £36.7m (2011)
• 8. Hernan Crespo: Parma to Lazio – £35.5m (2000)
• 9. Radamel Falcao: FC Porto to Atletico Madrid – £35.2m (2011)
• t10. Sergio Aguero: Atletico Madrid to Manchester City – £35m (2011) 
• t10. Andy Carroll: Newcastle United to Liverpool – £35m (2011)

 As seen here above the price of players has risen considerably the last years and many say that the transfer of Cristiano Ronaldo was what boosted the price of most world class players. £80m for one player was unheard of, it was maybe what one team would use for 4-5 even 6-7 players a year. The sales of Hernan Crespo, Zidane and Figo were all record breaking transfers at that time and when compared to Ronaldo it seems pretty much just "average". 

5. Does it work?

When looking at the final standings in both England and Spain over the years it shows that spending ridicoulus amounts of money doesn't get you much at all. Real Madrid spent close to £200m in 2009 and since then they have won 1 trophy and that was this year!! and they haven't exactly been saving up any cash since then. It seems that some Managers don't really get that it doesn't matter how many players you buy, how good they are, how big of an ego they have, it's all about whether these players can play together well enough to win. Chelsea is also a good example, since Abramovich bought the club he has spent A LOT of money of players and since 2003 when he bought the club Chelsea has won the league 3 times, and FA Cup a couple of times as well. But compared to the amounts of money they have spent it is just not enough. Meanwhile Man Utd for example have spent some money but not close to what other clubs like Man City have spent, but United have bought players that aren't that known but just as good as anyone, who haven't got the ego the size of Texas and who can play well together, and since 2003 they have won the league 5 times. And the same story can be told in Spain Barcelona have a lot of homegrown world class players like Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Pique and many more that they didn't have to spend money on while Madrid has bought their stars and don't have a lot of home grown players except for Iker Casillas maybe, and Barcelona have been dominant the last few years while Madrid have had to deal with 2nd place. Again it is all a question of chemistry. 

6. Conclusion

 Teams like Man City, Real Madrid and Chelsea haven't been ashamed to spend money on the best players in the world for the last few years and will spend any amount they have too to reach their goal to conquer their domestic league and/or Europe but so far they have come up short. Noone knows what the future beholds for these teams and in football anything can happen. If we look at the beginning of this season in England the two Manchester teams have started extremly well and have set the bar high for the rest of the teams, but you can say Man City have kind of taken the easy way to the top since they were nothing but middle class team until the new owner bought the team and changed their history for the better.

This just means that the football world is evolving, for the better? for worse? that question depends on the individual for everyone has their point of view. But this just makes for a more exciting season of football in the future. 

Sources

http://soccerlens.com/top-10-most-expensive-transfers-in-football/5244/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_United_F.C.