If you prefer a shorter read, this post has been broken down into a series, with its introduction here.
“I wonder what [Eden] Hazard is doing these days…”
This passing thought is what provided the inspiration for this long-gestating article. Hazard has since been released from his contract (a year early) by Real Madrid and has retired from football at the age of 32. (Side bar: How is Thiago Silva still going at 39??)
Given that the club signed the player for the mammoth fee of 115m euros, an early release, while hardly an ideal return on investment, is perhaps indicative of how far he fell short of initial expectations.
Looking at some of the many, many, many big-money transfers that took place during the 2023 summer transfer window in Europe and beyond, one can tell that there’s a lot of money in football. And judging by some of the mooted transfers, transfer outlay is clearly poised to increase. With such lavish amounts being spent on players, it seems fitting to ask: Does spending large amounts of money translate to success on the pitch?
To answer this question, let us examine some of the biggest transfers in football history and the sporting success, or lack thereof, of the clubs. First, some ground rules to guide us:
- Success is defined in purely sporting terms. This means that such factors as shirt sales, social media visibility, etc. are not considered. (Read more: How much do clubs actually make from shirt sales?)
- Only the transfer fees as reported on Transfermarkt factor into this analysis. (Read more: What role does Transfermarkt play in football transfers?)
- Managerial changes and their impact on team tactics are not considered.
The Players
For many, the shock transfer of Neymar from Barcelona to PSG (Paris Saint-Germain) for a world record fee of €222m was the moment that football changed forever. And no wonder. The fee paid was more than double the €94m paid for Cristiano Ronaldo in 2009.
And you know what, football did change.
Neymar’s transfer seemingly opened Pandora’s Box, with a number of transfers since then crossing the €100m threshold. As of the time of writing, there have been 13 transfers over €100m since Neymar’s PSG transfer as compared to two, Paul Pogba (€105m) and Gareth Bale (€101m), before the transfer.
While it would have been easy to select players based on the shock value of their transfers, it wouldn’t have been very objective. So I decided to take a more balanced approach by considering the cumulative transfer fee commanded by a player over time. After all, it stands to reason that if a player has been involved in several high-value transfers, this player must be worth the money, right?
While this approach would obviously favour more recent transfers, it does provide us with a few unexpected inclusions on the list. Without further ado, here’s the list of players we’ll be looking at:
- Neymar (€400m)
- Romelu Lukaku (€339m)
- Cristiano Ronaldo (€247m)
- Ousmane Dembélé (€220m)
- Álvaro Morata (€189m)
These are the rules we’ll follow when evaluating the above players:
- Only transfers over €50m shall be considered.
- The entire duration of the player’s stay at a club shall be considered.
- Where applicable, the two seasons immediately before and immediately after the player’s arrival and departure respectively shall be considered. This will help us determine if there was an appreciable difference in the club’s performance with the player present.
- No one-season stays shall be considered. A stay is here defined as the period of time when the player is under contract at a club. (Keep this definition in mind; it will come into play later.)
- Only the player’s contribution to the club’s league performance shall be analysed. There will, however, be mentions of the club’s exploits in other competitions.
With all of the necessary housekeeping out of the way, let’s get down to business.
1. Neymar (€400m)
Arguably one of the game’s most naturally talented players, Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior has been a player in demand since he made his debut for Santos. This is shown by the fact that he has been involved in THREE transfers worth over €50m.
However, due to the fact that the most recent transfer took place only a few months ago, only two shall be considered: His move to Barcelona, followed by his move to PSG.
Neymar to Barcelona (€88m): 2013 to 2017
A transfer that saw more than its fair share of controversy in the aftermath, Neymar’s move to Barcelona was also something of a soap opera, involving two potential suitors in the form of Real Madrid and his eventual destination. But how did it work out for the club?
During the eight-year period being examined, Barcelona were THE dominant force in the Spanish league, winning the competition 5 times. And they didn’t just win it, they won it in style, averaging 91.625 points out of a possible 114.
To put that into perspective, in order to accumulate 91 points, a team would need to win 30 and draw 1 out of a possible 38 matches (for a win percentage of 78.95%). Of course, that average takes away from the sheer dominance of the 100 points accumulated in 2012/13 (won 32, drew 4, lost 2)
| Season | League Position | League Points (Max 114) |
|---|---|---|
| 2011/12 (without) | 2 | 91 |
| 2012/13 (without) | 1 | 100 |
| 2013/14 (with) | 2 | 87 |
| 2014/15 (with) | 1 | 94 |
| 2015/16 (with) | 1 | 91 |
| 2016/17 (with) | 2 | 90 |
| 2017/18 (without) | 1 | 93 |
| 2018/19 (without) | 1 | 87 |
| Avg. 91.625 |
Interestingly, though, the period when Neymar was at the club (four years), seems to have been slightly less succesful for the team in terms of league trophies. Out of the 5 league title wins, 3 were achieved without Neymar. Beyond that, even the final points tally (dashed line in the graph above) was higher without him in the team (92.75 without versus 90.5 with).
Was he holding the team back? Or was it simply a matter of an underperforming team? Let’s see what his individual contributions were.
| Season | Club League Goals | Goals | Assists1 | % Contribution2 | Match Winners3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011/12 (without) | 114 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2012/13 (without) | 115 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2013/14 (with) | 100 | 9 | 10 | 19.00% | 2 |
| 2014/15 (with) | 110 | 22 | 9 | 28.18% | 7 |
| 2015/16 (with) | 112 | 24 | 16 | 35.71% | 5 |
| 2016/17 (with) | 116 | 13 | 14 | 23.28% | 0 |
| 2017/18 (without) | 99 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2018/19 (without) | 90 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
During the two seasons when Barcelona won the league, Neymar was at the heart of the team’s performances, contributing to 28.18% of the team’s goals in 2014/15 and a genuinely impressive 35.71% in 2015/16.
He also netted 7 (2014/15) and 5 (2015/16) match-winning goals respectively, which would have earned the team 21 and 15 points respectively.
If we were to deduct the points earned by Neymar from the final points tally in the two seasons, Barcelona would have ended the seasons:
(In addition to winning the league, the 2014/15 season saw Barcelona win the UEFA Champions League and Spanish Cup, a feat that’s only ever been achieved by ten European clubs.)
By contrast, the seasons when Neymar wasn’t at his best were the seasons when the team appeared to struggle (relatively speaking), finishing second in both seasons.
His debut season was the only season in which his goal contribution was below 20%. And even though he contributed to 23.28% of the team’s goals in 2016/17, he scored no match winners.
Interestingly, the number of goals scored by the team in the season immediately after Neymar’s departure dropped by 14.66%. And the decrease only continued the following season, reaching a low of 90 goals. So while the team continued to be successful, winning the league both times, was there perhaps an element of flair lacking?
Going back to our measure of success, how well did Neymar’s transfer work for Barcelona?
During his time, Barcelona won a total of 9 trophies, winning at least one trophy per season:
- 1 x FIFA Club World Cup (2016)
- 1 x Spanish Super Cup (2013/14)
- 1 x UEFA Champions League (2014/15)
- 1 x UEFA Supercup (2015/16)
- 2 x Spanish League (2014/15, 2015/16)
- 3 x Spanish Cup (2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17)
Clearly, Neymar played a big part in Barcelona’s successes during his four-year stay. And it is this fact that contributed to his next transfer.
Neymar to Paris Saint-Germain (€222m): 2017 to 2023
The transfer that shook the world. The highest-ever transfer fee paid for a player (so far).
Beyond the transfer fee alone, the total outlay of the transfer reportedly cost PSG a whopping €489m. But the club felt that this was worth it. They were already the dominant force in the French league, winning the competition 4 times in the preceding 5 years. Neymar’s transfer, the club felt, would help them move to the next level, winning the Champions League. (Spoiler: It didn’t.)
The move also matched Neymar’s ambitions of being the main man in a team, having felt somewhat overshadowed by Lionel Messi at Barcelona.
So how did it work out?
| Season | League Position | League Points (Max 114) |
|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 (without) | 1 | 96 |
| 2016/17 (without) | 2 | 87 |
| 2017/18 (with) | 1 | 93 |
| 2018/19 (with) | 1 | 91 |
| 2019/204 (with) | 1 | 68 |
| 2020/21 (with) | 2 | 82 |
| 2021/22 (with) | 1 | 86 |
| 2022/23 (with) | 1 | 85 |
| Avg. 86 |
One can see why PSG wanted to kick on and move to the next level; they absolutely dominate the league. In the eight-year period being evaluated, they won the league 6 times, finishing second on the other two occasions.
A point to note: The points haul in the 2019/20 season is a lot lower than the other seasons due to the COVID-enforced cancellation of the 2019/20 sporting season, so there are extenuating circumstances.
Even excluding the 2019/20 season, though, the points earned by PSG in the league trended downwards, something that many would attribute to the complacency that comes from competing in the one-horse race that is the French Ligue 1 (pronounced “Ligue Un”); a point that we are most certainly going to revisit.
| Season | Club League Goals | Goals | Assists1 | % Contribution2 | Match Winners3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 (without) | 102 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2016/17 (without) | 83 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2017/18 (with) | 108 | 19 | 13 | 29.63% | 2 |
| 2018/19 (with) | 105 | 15 | 8 | 21.90% | 6 |
| 2019/204 (with) | 75 | 13 | 6 | 25.33% | 7 |
| 2020/21 (with) | 86 | 9 | 6 | 17.44% | 2 |
| 2021/22 (with) | 90 | 13 | 6 | 21.11% | 0 |
| 2022/23 (with) | 89 | 13 | 11 | 26.97% | 5 |
Unlike his time at Barcelona, Neymar needed no time to adjust to his new team. In his first season, he scored 19 goals, almost singlehandedly contributing to the 30.12% swing in goals scored by the team (108 in 2017/18 compared to 83 in 2016/17). This was on top of his 13 assists, leading to an overall goal contribution of 29.63% that year.
And yet, despite posting such impressive numbers, only two of those goals were match winners, contributing 6 points to the team’s cause.
Statistically, something that jumps out is the 2019/20 season. During that season, PSG only played 27 games. And yet, Neymar scored 7 match-winning goals. In other words, he won the team 25.93% of their games in the league, a number that just exceeds his overall goal contribution of 25.33%.
It was during this season that PSG got the closest to winning the Champions League, agonisingly losing to Bayern Munich in the final. Had things turned out differently, one feels that this would have been the season when PSG’s lavish outlay might have been vindicated and Neymar would have cemented his place as both a club legend and one of the game’s greats. Sadly, though, that didn’t happen.
And PSG only ever got as close to tasting Champions League success in the 2020/21 season, reaching the semi-finals. They only got as far as the second round of the competition (last-16) in each of the four other seasons.
Going back to the numbers, we see that much like the points tally, the goals tally also trended downwards over the course of Neymar’s stay at the club. And it is at this point that I get to talk about the club’s utter dominance in the French league.
| Season | League Points | Difference (#1 - #2) | Points w/o Neymar | Position w/o Neymar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017/18 (with) | 93 | 13 | 87 | 1 |
| 2018/19 (with) | 91 | 16 | 73 | 2 |
| 2019/204 (with) | 68 | 12 | 47 | 4 |
| 2020/21 (with) | 82 | -1 | 76 | 3 |
| 2021/22 (with) | 86 | 15 | 86 | 1 |
| 2022/23 (with) | 85 | 1 | 70 | 3 |
In the seasons that PSG won the league, the difference in points between them and the club that finished second, with the exception of 2022/23, was always in the double digits. Always.
Calculating the average of their title-winning seasons, PSG won the league by an average of 11.4 points. Even factoring in the lone season when they didn’t win the league, the point difference would still be 9.33.
This means that over the six years, PSG could have sat out 18 league games (3 per season) and would still have been the dominant force in the league.
What’s even more interesting, though, is the role that Neymar played (or didn’t play). Out of the 5 league triumphs (again, asterisk against 2019/20), two would have come regardless of Neymar’s match-winning goals. And in all but one of those seasons, PSG would have finished in the top three.
Despite all this, from a sporting perspective, Neymar’s transfer was undoubtedly a success. During his time at the club, he lifted 14 trophies:
- 2 x French League Cup (2017/18, 2019/20)
- 3 x French Cup (2017/18, 2019/20, 2020/21)
- 4 x French Super Cup (2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2022/23)
- 5 x French League (2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, 2021/22, 2022/23)
That being said, there is still a bittersweet feeling that accompanies his time in Paris. He missed 119 matches (about 20 each season) during his time at the club due to injuries, often at key points in the season. (Side bar: Just how brilliant would he have been had he managed to stay fit?)
Given PSG’s reported ambition of winning the Champions League and Neymar’s own ambition of being the main man, the fact that the team barely lived up to expectations in all but two seasons would likely have been disappointing to all parties involved.
2. Romelu Lukaku (€339m)
In what may come as a surprise to some who follow football, Romelu Menama Lukaku Bolingoli was actually at the top of this list until the 2023 summer transfer window; €333.36m to Neymar’s €310m. (Sign of just how long this article has been in the pipeline.)
Like Neymar above, Lukaku has been involved in three transfers worth over €50m. Unlike Neymar, though, all three can be evaluated. So let’s get started.
Lukaku to Manchester United (€84.7m): 2017 to 2019
Manchester United had just had their most successful season since Sir Alex Ferguson retired at the end of 2012/13 season. They concluded the 2016/17 season as Europa League and League Cup winners.
Despite this, their league performance was a mess. They finished sixth, something that would have been unthinkable just a few short years before. There was a recognition that, despite success in two cup competitions, Manchester United needed to be challenging on all fronts, starting with the Premier League.
However, the loss of 17-goal hero Zlatan Ibrahimović was going to make that a bit more challenging. Enter Big Rom.
(Quick aside: It should be noted that the 17 goals mentioned were just in the Premier League. Despite ending the season with injury, Ibrahimović scored a total of 28 goals and provided 10 assists over the course of 46 games in 2016/17.)
Having finished the 2016/17 season as second on the top scorers list with 25 goals, it was felt that Lukaku would more than make up for the departure of Ibrahimović, whose 17 goals had propelled goal-shy Manchester United to a total of 54 goals.
Add that to the fact that the team were managed by José Mourinho, whose second stint at Chelsea overlapped with Lukaku’s first stint at Chelsea (football is messy), Lukaku’s transfer seemed to be a match made in heaven.
But was it?
| Season | League Position | League Points (Max 114) |
|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 (without) | 5 | 66 |
| 2016/17 (without) | 6 | 69 |
| 2017/18 (with) | 2 | 81 |
| 2018/19 (with) | 6 | 66 |
| 2019/20 (without) | 3 | 66 |
| 2020/21 (without) | 2 | 74 |
| Avg. 70.33 |
Lukaku’s first season at the club saw Manchester United finish second in the league, something that Mourinho went on to call one of the greatest achievements of his career.
While one may be tempted to take such a statement with a pinch of salt, the second-place finish in the 2017/18 season was United’s highest league position post-Ferguson. Incidentally, Lukaku scored a hat-trick (three goals) for West Brom during Ferguson’s last match in charge; a game that ended 5-5.
This season also saw the highest points total not just of any season in the six-year period being evaluated, but of any post-Ferguson season to date. (Maybe Mourinho might have been on to something.)
With such an impressive finish, many fans and observers expected the club to kick on and sustain a challenge for the league title. Sadly, that didn’t happen. The 2017/18 season saw a steep drop in performance, with the club finishing 4 league positions lower and with 15 fewer points.
How, though, did Lukaku figure in all of this?
| Season | Club League Goals | Goals | Assists1 | % Contribution2 | Match Winners3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 (without) | 49 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2016/17 (without) | 54 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2017/18 (with) | 68 | 16 | 7 | 33.82% | 5 |
| 2018/19 (with) | 65 | 12 | 1 | 20.00% | 4 |
| 2019/20 (without) | 66 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2020/21 (without) | 73 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
Lukaku seems to have held up his end of the bargain: He delivered goals.
Mirroring the team’s fortunes, his highlight campaign was the 2017/18 season, when he bagged 16 goals. Coupled with his 7 assists, he contributed to 33.82% of the goals scored by the team. This combined total of 23, it should be noted, was much lower than the 25 goals and 6 assists he got for Everton just the previous season. While Lukaku might have personally been disappointed with the numbers he posted, it should have provided a solid foundation for subsequent seasons.
It didn’t.
His second and final season proved to be something of a disappointment comparatively. Rather than building on the performance of his debut season, Lukaku’s contributions decreased noticeably. He scored 12 goals and assisted just once for an overall contribution of 20%, a drop of 13 percentage points. Despite this, Lukaku was still able to score 4 match-winning goals, earning 12 points for the team. Had he found the net more regularly, one might wonder, would he have led the team to a few more points? We’ll never know.
What we do know is that the team didn’t miss him too much after his departure. The following two seasons saw the number of goals scored trend upwards. In fact, the highest number of goals scored in the six-year evaluation period was at its highest in 2020/21, two years after Lukaku’s departure.
With all of this in mind, what can we say about Lukaku’s transfer to Manchester United? Was it a success? No.
A transfer that seemed to have started off so promisingly ended in disappointment for both the club and the player, whose sole achievement was:
- Being part of one of the best performances of Mourinho’s coaching career.
How much of this is down to the player and how much is down to the team is not for this article to discuss. But it should be noted that the only other trophy won by the club since 2016/17 was the League Cup in 2022/23, some four years after Lukaku’s big-money departure.
Lukaku to Inter Milan (€74m): 2019 to 2021
While he left Manchester United under a bit of a cloud, Lukaku’s record in the Premier League up to that point stood at a respectable 113 goals scored in 252 games, a figure that puts him among the top 25 goalscorers in Premier League history. Perhaps it is this that convinced Inter Milan to take a punt on Lukaku in 2019.
At this point in time, Inter Milan had gone 8 years without winning a thing, having last lifted a trophy during the 2010/11 season.
For a team that had got used to the taste of silverware, having lifted 15 trophies between 2004 and 2011, such a long period without any form of success was a veritable famine.
Enter Big Rom. Again.
(While looking at the data below, ignore the statistics from the 2022/23 season. We’ll get back to them later on.)
| Season | League Position | League Points (Max 114) |
|---|---|---|
| 2017/18 (without) | 4 | 72 |
| 2018/19 (without) | 4 | 69 |
| 2019/20 (with) | 2 | 82 |
| 2020/21 (with) | 1 | 91 |
| 2021/22 (without) | 2 | 84 |
| 2022/23 (with) | 3 | 72 |
| Avg. 78.33 |
Much like his time at United, Lukaku spent two seasons at Inter Milan. (Again, we’ll get back to the 2022/23 season.)
And also like his time at United, his first season at Inter yielded a second-place finish, immediately improving on the consecutive fourth-place finishes of the two preceding seasons. The points total of 82 was also the highest number of points earned by the club since the 2009/10 season (also 82). Once again, his first season at a club yielded reasons for immense optimism. Would the follow-up build on this excitement? Or would it be a let-down?
Thankfully for all those affiliated with Inter Milan, the answer was the former rather than the latter. Inter Milan ended the long wait for a league title by finishing the season as champions. And they did it in style too, earning the highest points total since the 2006/07 season, when they finished as champions with 97 points.
Unsurprisingly, or surprisingly, Lukaku played a big part in the club’s achievements.
| Season | Club League Goals | Goals | Assists1 | % Contribution2 | Match Winners3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017/18 (without) | 66 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2018/19 (without) | 57 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2019/20 (with) | 81 | 23 | 2 | 30.86% | 7 |
| 2020/21 (with) | 89 | 24 | 10 | 38.20% | 8 |
| 2021/22 (without) | 84 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2022/23 (with) | 71 | 10 | 6 | 22.54% | 1 |
Based on the lightning start he made to life at Inter, you wouldn’t know that Lukaku had just come off a disappointing campaign. He hit the ground running, scoring 34 goals and providing 6 assists in all competitions, with 23 of those goals and 2 of those assists coming in the league.
Just how big an impact did Lukaku’s arrival have on Inter’s goalscoring ability? Looking at the numbers, he singlehandedly contributed to the 42% increase in goals scored by Inter. Taking away his goals and assists, Inter would be left with a total of 56 goals scored. And that’s without factoring in the 21 points he earned for his team through his 7 match-winning goals. Pretty impressive as far as debut seasons go. His second season, it turns out, would be even better.
Building on his excellent first-season performance, Lukaku ended the 2020/21 league season with 24 goals and 10 assists; an overall contribution of 38.20% of the club’s goals. Of these 24 goals, 8 were match winners, contributing a whopping 24 points, or 26.37% of the club’s total league points. The end-result is that, as mentioned above, Inter clinched their 19th league title.
Interestingly, though, one area that declined in 2020/21 was his contribution in other competitions. Whereas he scored 11 and provided 4 assists in 2019/20 in other competitions, those numbers dipped to 6 goals and 0 assists in 2020/21.
With two good seasons under his belt at Inter, the future was looking good for both club and player. But the one constant in life is change. And change came knocking in the form of Chelsea FC, who made an offer that was too good for Inter Milan, whose financial woes were well-documented, to turn down.
During his time at Inter, Lukaku helped the team lift one trophy:
- 1 x Italian League (2020/21)
Having left Manchester United under a bit of a cloud and with something to prove, Lukaku’s time at Inter Milan can be considered a success, if not, perhaps, quite as fruitful in terms of trophies as might have been hoped. But that wasn’t the end of his story at Inter.
Lukaku to Chelsea (€113m): (2021 to date)
They say that you should never go back to your ex. That saying, for some reason, doesn’t seem to apply in the world of football. In one of two examples that we shall consider in quick succession, Lukaku returned to Chelsea, having left for Everton in 2014.
Quick digression: Remember the definition of one-season stays that I mentioned in guideline #4? This is one of two transfers where it comes into play.
Chelsea had just come off the back of a somewhat mixed season. On the one hand, they won the 2020/21 edition of the UEFA Champions League, beating Manchester City 1-0. On the other hand, however, they finished fourth in the league, 19 points behind champions Manchester City (funny old game, isn’t it?). They also lost the FA Cup final to Leicester, a team that finished 1 point and 1 position behind Chelsea in the league (again, funny old game, isn’t it?).
Many, fans and observers alike, felt that Chelsea were one striker short of a truly dominant team. And looking at the statistics, one could see their point.
In the league, for instance, they scored 58 goals, 25 goals shy of top dogs, Manchester City; this tally was also the lowest among the teams that finished in the top 7.
The decision-makers at Chelsea agreed with this sentiment. In a transfer that broke the club’s then-transfer record, Lukaku was brought back to Chelsea for €113m.
Despite the eye-watering amounts involved in the transfer, it looked to make sense. Here’s a quote from Lukaku that seemed to capture the general sentiment:
The way the club is going fits my ambitions perfectly at 28 and just coming off winning Serie A. I think this opportunity comes at the right time and hopefully we can have a lot of success together.
| Season | League Position | League Points (Max 114) |
|---|---|---|
| 2019/20 (without) | 4 | 66 |
| 2020/21 (without) | 4 | 67 |
| 2021/22 (with) | 3 | 74 |
| 2022/23 (with) | 12 | 44 |
| Avg. 62.75 |
First, there is nothing wrong with your screen or how the graph above is being rendered. Chelsea were absolutely pathetic in 2022/23. The drop in performance was so much, I had to change the graph setup slightly from the graphs used so far. But let me not get too far ahead of myself just yet.
The 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons were both fairly identical, with the club finishing in fourth place in both seasons and a difference of only 1 point in the points total. But that changed in 2021/22.
Despite only moving up one place in the league table, there was an appreciable increase in the points earned. All that was undone in 2022/23, but we’ll get to that.
As for Lukaku’s role in all of this, things probably didn’t pan out quite as well as he’d have hoped.
| Season | Club Leage Goals | Goals | Assists 1 | % Contribution 2 | Match Winners3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019/20 (without) | 69 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2020/21 (without) | 58 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2021/22 (with) | 76 | 8 | 1 | 11.84% | 3 |
| 2022/23 (with) | 38 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
In 2021/22, Lukaku scored a grand total of 8 goals, chipping in with 1 assist for a total contribution of 11.84%. That’s … not great. Especially given the amount of money that was spent on him. That return is so bad, in fact, that you would need to go back all the way to 2011/12 to find a season in which he scored fewer than 10 league goals. In that season, he scored a grand total of 2 goals for his first club, RSC Anderlecht. Those goals came in the first two matches of the season, before his first transfer to Chelsea. He made a further 8 appearances, this time for Chelsea, during the 11/12 season, not once completing a full match. (He made 7 appearances as a substitute; he started the eighth but was substituted off before completing the match.)
So why was Lukaku’s goal return so poor? It largely seems to come down to two factors.
First, a total lack of form. He only scored in 6 of the 26 games in which he featured. Granted, he only played the full 90 minutes in 12 of these games, with the 14 other appearances ranging in duration from 4 to 80 minutes.
Regardless, however, that’s not the sort of return that would be expected from a player that cost so much. (Read more: Breakdown of appearances made by Lukaku in the 2021/22 Premier League season.)
Second, as a result of his poor form, Lukaku did not feature as much as he would have liked to. In an interview with Sky Italia, Lukaku admitted that he was “not happy” with the situation. In something of a vicious cycle, though, this unhappiness seemed to affect his performances on the pitch; he went 10 appearances without scoring after the release of that interview.
For all his failings, if you were take away the 9 points earned by Lukaku (3 match winners), Chelsea would have ended the season with 65 points, a points haul that would have been lower than the previous two seasons’ tallies.
And he also ended the season with one trophy:
- 1 x Club World Cup (2022)
So what in the world happened in 2022/23?
Loan to Inter Milan (€7.86m loan fee): 2022 to 20235
Remember the figures from the section discussing Lukaku’s time at Inter Milan? This is where the 2022/23 statistics come into play.
Despite spending a sizeable fee to acquire Lukaku’s services only the year before, Chelsea decided to cut their losses.
While a sale would have been preferred, Inter, financial issues and all, were unable to afford a permanent transfer. And, so, in a deal that worked for all parties, Lukaku went on loan back to Inter Milan, a move he himself described as “coming back home.”
As it turns out, the move benefitted Lukaku and Inter a lot more than it did Chelsea. Despite being affected by injuries (he only completed 90 minutes in 10 league matches), Lukaku’s goal contribution improved. He scored 10 goals and provided 6 assists for Inter, an overall contribution of 22.54%.
While Inter did not win the league, finishing in third place, Lukaku ended the season with two more trophies:
- 1 x Italian Cup (2022/23)
- 1 x Italian Super Cup (2022/23)
Chelsea, meanwhile, went from disappointing in 2021/22 to laughably mediocre in 2022/23. In a season of turmoil for the club that had bled over from the end of 2021/22, Chelsea scored a total of 38 goals in the league, half of what they had scored just one season before. And after three successive top-four finishes in the league, they ended 2022/23 in 12th place with 44 points.
Sadly, unlike 2020/21 or 2021/22, there were no other trophies to ease the disappointment. They were terrible all around.
Would retaining the services of Lukaku have helped Chelsea, even a little bit? I can’t say for sure. What I can say is that having a player who has shown himself capable of chipping in with a few goals wouldn’t have hurt their chances.
So what can we say about Lukaku’s transfer to Chelsea? Was it a success?
No.
The Lukaku transfer is looking more and more like a bad bit of business on the part of Chelsea. Not only did they spend an absurd amount of money on the player, they have barely got any value for money. Lukaku’s relative success while on loan at Inter and his performances while on loan at Roma during the ongoing 2023/24 season stand in stark contrast to Chelsea’s struggles.
Will Chelsea eventually be able to offload Lukaku? Or is he destined to continue being sent out on loan until his Chelsea contract expires? Only time will tell.
3. Cristiano Ronaldo (€247m)
One of the few players to have truly transcended the game of football, Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro is a sporting icon, a name and a face that is instantly recognisable, even by people who aren’t football fans (or fanatics). Considered by many to be one of the all-time greats of the sport, it’s unsurprising to see Ronaldo on this list. What may be surprising is the fact that, unlike Neymar or Lukaku, Ronaldo has only been involved in two big-money transfers.
Before getting into the transfers, I’d just like to say how big a shame it is that Messi spent most of his career at one club and in the two instances (so far) that he did move, it was on a free transfer. I knew Ronaldo was good, I just didn’t know how good he was before doing the analysis that was needed for this section. It would have been brilliant to do an apples-to-apples comparison with Messi.
Fun fact, Cristiano Ronaldo was named after actor and former US President Ronald Reagan.
Another fun fact, only 9 years separate the Portuguese Ronaldo (CR7) from O Fenômeno, the Brazilian Ronaldo (R9).
Ronaldo to Real Madrid (€94m): 2009 to 2018
Only a few months after Sir Alex Ferguson declared Real Madrid a mob, stating that he wouldn’t “sell them a virus,” Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United (for the first time). The €94m paid by Real Madrid stood as the highest-ever transfer fee paid for a player. It broke the previous record of €67m that Real Madrid paid AC Milan for Kaká only a couple of weeks before. (Real had a busy summer in 2009 as part of their second galácticos era.)
Yet another fun fact, Ronaldo (R9) was part of the first galácticos era.
We’ve already looked at the outcome of one world-record transfer, that of Neymar to PSG. Having seen how underwhelming, but still successful, that transfer turned out to be, let’s take a look at our second and final world-record transfer. (All other transfers that have been or will be examined took place post-Neymar, bar two.)
| Season | League Position | League Points (Max 114) |
|---|---|---|
| 2007/08 (without) | 1 | 85 |
| 2008/09 (without) | 2 | 78 |
| 2009/10 (with) | 2 | 96 |
| 2010/11 (with) | 2 | 92 |
| 2011/12 (with) | 1 | 100 |
| 2012/13 (with) | 2 | 85 |
| 2013/14 (with) | 3 | 87 |
| 2014/15 (with) | 2 | 92 |
| 2015/16 (with) | 2 | 90 |
| 2016/17 (with) | 1 | 93 |
| 2017/18 (with) | 3 | 76 |
| 2018/19 (without) | 3 | 68 |
| 2019/20 (without) | 1 | 87 |
| Avg. 86.85 |
Ronaldo was at Real Madrid for a while; three years more than Neymar spent at PSG and a little over twice as long as Neymar spent at Barcelona. Given that the average stay of players at clubs in Europe has been trending downwards (2.4 years in 2013 down to 2.25 years in 2022), are we likely to see a situation where players sign for blinding amounts of money before being sold on to other clubs within a relatively short time?
Or are we likely to see more and more situations where players are signed for huge fees, stay only for the duration of their contracts and then leave for free, as one Arsène Wenger predicted? (It’s happened, you know.)
So how did Real Madrid fare in the league during the 13-year evaluation period?
For a club as prestigious and well-regarded in the world of football as Real, they were surprisingly … mediocre? They won the league only four times in 13 seasons, twice with Ronaldo and twice without him. And they finished in third place thrice.
This, however, doesn’t seem to have been due to a lack of trying. Their title-winning tally in 2007/08 was 85 points. They only got fewer points in three of the subsequent twelve seasons: 78 in 2008/09, 76 in 2017/18 and 68 in 2018/19. In all the other seasons, including their third-place finish in 2013/14, they earned more points. Guess that’s what happens when you have something approaching a competitive league, right? (Looking at you, PSG.)
The highlight of this period was undoubtedly the record 100 points earned in 2011/12, a feat that would be equalled one season later by Barcelona.
While they didn’t win as many league titles, Real performed a lot better with Ronaldo in their team. The average points earned during the 9 seasons when Ronaldo was at Real stands at 90.11 versus 79.5 points without him. And the lowest points total came in the season immediately after Ronaldo left.
All of this seems to indicate that Ronaldo had an impact at Real. But just how big an impact was it?
| Season | Club League Goals | Goals | Assists1 | % Contribution2 | Match Winners3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007/08 (without) | 84 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2008/09 (without) | 83 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2009/10 (with) | 102 | 26 | 9 | 34.31% | 6 |
| 2010/11 (with) | 102 | 40 | 13 | 51.96% | 12 |
| 2011/12 (with) | 121 | 46 | 12 | 47.93% | 17 |
| 2012/13 (with) | 103 | 34 | 11 | 43.69% | 7 |
| 2013/14 (with) | 104 | 31 | 11 | 40.38% | 12 |
| 2014/15 (with) | 118 | 48 | 17 | 55.08% | 11 |
| 2015/16 (with) | 110 | 35 | 11 | 41.82% | 9 |
| 2016/17 (with) | 106 | 25 | 6 | 29.25% | 6 |
| 2017/18 (with) | 94 | 26 | 5 | 32.98% | 8 |
| 2018/19 (without) | 63 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2019/20 (without) | 70 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
Again, I knew Ronaldo was good at Real. I just didn’t know how good he actually was until I saw these numbers.
For starters, goalscoring wasn’t exactly a problem that applied to Real, having scored 84 and 83 goals in the two seasons preceding Ronaldo’s arrival. (For comparison, look at the goalscoring records of Manchester United, Inter Milan and Chelsea.)
Yet, Ronaldo’s arrival instantly raised the bar. And once Ronaldo left, there was an instant drop-off in goals scored, with the end-season tallies of the two succeeding post-Ronaldo seasons coming in at 63 and 70 goals.
Over the course of the 9 seasons when Ronaldo was at the club, Real scored an average of 106.67 goals, with a high of 121 and a low of 94. Without Ronaldo in the team, that average dropped to 75 goals a season, a difference of about 29.7%.
The media would often talk about “Messidependencia”, the idea that Barcelona were dependent on Lionel Messi, in criticism of the club. But over at Real Madrid, the problem seemed to apply just as much to Ronaldo. On average, he contributed 42.29% of the team’s goals, which is absolutely bonkers if you think about it. Over the course of the 9 seasons, Real scored a total of 960 goals. Of these goals, Ronaldo either scored or assisted 406.
Looking at individual seasons, Ronaldo’s worst-performing seasons were his first and his last two at the club. And even then, he scored or assisted over 30 goals.
By contrast, his best seasons were 2010/11, 2011/12 and 2014/15, when his contribution figures stood at 51.96%, 47.93% and a stunning 55.08%.
Something that stood out for me was the title-winning 2011/12 season. The 121 goals scored by Real is the current record for most goals scored by a team in a league season. Of those, 58 were contributed by Ronaldo. But more than just the sheer number of goals scored was the importance of these goals.
Ronaldo scored 17 match winners, earning 51 points. To put this another way, 51% of the total points (a record points haul, it should be emphasised) earned by the team came from one person.
Once again, I knew Ronaldo was good. What I didn’t know was just how good he was.
So, what can we say about Ronaldo’s world-record transfer to Real Madrid? Was it a success or not?
It wasn’t just a success, it was a resounding success for both the club and the player.
Despite their middling success in the league, Real were successful in other competitions, most notably the Champions League, where Real became the first team to retain the trophy in its current format. With Ronaldo in the side, the club won 16 trophies:
- 2 x Spanish Cup (2010/11, 2013/14)
- 2 x Spanish League (2011/12, 2016/17)
- 2 x Spanish Super Cup (2012/13, 2017/18)
- 3 x FIFA Club World Cup (2015, 2017, 2018)
- 3 x UEFA Supercup (2014/15, 2016/17, 2017/18)
- 4 x UEFA Champions League (2013/14, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18)
Additionally, during his time at Real, Ronaldo became the club’s all-time top scorer with 450 goals in 438 games, breaking a record that had been set by Spanish great Raúl, who scored 323 goals in 741 games.
Despite having a bit more in the tank to give, and having previously stated that he wanted to end his career at the club, Ronaldo chose to draw the curtain on his very successful time at Real and leave at the end of the 2017/18 season.
Ronaldo to Juventus (€117m): 2018 to 2021
Stop me if you’ve heard this story before: A club that is absolutely dominant in it’s country’s top-tier league looks to step up and make its mark in European competition. The decision is thus made to buy a player from the Spanish league who has shown himself to be a competent goalscorer and has the experience of winning the Champions League. Sounds familiar, right?
Despite having just lifted his fourth Champions League title with Real (his fifth overall), Ronaldo was reportedly unhappy at the club. So, he decided to move to a club where he felt valued.
With their desire to turn their league dominance into European dominance, Juventus were more than happy to add to their ranks one of only a handful of people to have won the Champions League five times.
Hence it came about that, in the summer of 2018, Juventus signed Ronaldo for €117m. (A shrewd bit of business by Real Madrid, if I do say so myself.)
Would this turn out to be a marriage of convenience that would end in tears and disappointment? Or would it blossom into a beautiful relationship with everything both parties hoped for and more?
| Season | League Position | League Points (Max 114) |
|---|---|---|
| 2016/17 (without) | 1 | 91 |
| 2017/18 (without) | 1 | 95 |
| 2018/19 (with) | 1 | 90 |
| 2019/20 (with) | 1 | 83 |
| 2020/21 (with) | 4 | 78 |
| 2021/22 (without) | 4 | 70 |
| 2022/23 (without) | 7 | 62 |
| Avg. 81.29 |
Some things don’t really jump out at you until you see them presented differently.
I hadn’t caught this while viewing the data in an Excel file but looking at the graph, I saw that everything post-2017/18 was downhill. And it’s not a gradual decline either. It’s laughably bad.
From the highs of winning the league for four years in a row to the ignominy of finishing in seventh place. From a period-high of 95 points to 62 points. (I thought of this comic the moment I saw the graph.)
I’d like to step back for a moment and look beyond the seven-year evaluation period, just to emphasise the extent of Juventus’ utter dominance over the rest of the Italian league.
Those four league triumphs between 2016/17 and 2019/20? They were part of a NINE-year title-winning streak beginning in 2011/12.
Those 95 points earned in 2017/18? That wasn’t even their highest points tally. That honour goes to the 2013/14 season, during which Juventus earned 102 points. That, by the way, is the highest points tally ever earned by a club in any of Europe’s top five leagues.
It’s almost as if Juventus saw PSG’s dominance and said, “You ain’t seen nothing, yet, boy.” Unlike PSG, however, Juventus suffered a complete collapse in form.
The total of 62 points earned in 2022/23 was the club’s lowest tally since the 58 points earned in 2010/11, when the club also finished in seventh place. However sensational this collapse in form is, I would be remiss not to mention that this tally came after a points deduction was imposed on the club due to some financial indiscretions.
But enough about the club. How did Ronaldo do?
| Season | Club League Goals | Goals | Assists1 | % Contribution2 | Match Winners3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016/17 (without) | 77 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2017/18 (without) | 86 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2018/19 (with) | 70 | 21 | 9 | 42.86% | 7 |
| 2019/20 (with) | 76 | 31 | 6 | 48.68% | 12 |
| 2020/21 (with) | 77 | 29 | 2 | 40.26% | 8 |
| 2021/22 (without) | 57 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2022/23 (without) | 56 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
Unsurprisingly, Ronaldo did what he was brought in to do: he scored goals. Lots of them. It really is surprising just how lethal Ronaldo is in front of goal. Over the course of his three seasons at Juventus, he scored a total of 81 Serie A goals in 98 games, an average of 27 goals a season. And his goal contribution never dipped below 40%, with an average of 43.93% which compares favourably to his average goal contribution at Real, albeit from a much smaller sample size.
What stood out to me was just how quickly Ronaldo became indispensable to the team. While the number of goals decreased by 16 between 2017/18 and 2018/19, Ronaldo chipped in with 30 goal contributions, 7 of which were match winners. Those numbers peaked in 2019/20 with 37 goal contributions, 12 of which were match winners. And while his numbers dropped in 2020/21, the impact he had on the team can be seen by the decrease in goals immediately after his departure.
Further emphasising the impact he had, if one were to take away the points earned by Ronaldo’s match-winning goals, Juventus would have finished fourth in 2018/19, eleventh in 2019/20 and eighth in 2020/21.
All of this to say that Ronaldo held up his end of the bargain. And from a sporting perspective, his time at Juventus can be viewed as a success. After all, he lifted 5 trophies during his time at the club:
- 1 x Italian Cup (2020/21)
- 2 x Italian League (2018/19, 2019/20)
- 2 x Italian Super Cup (2018/19, 2019/20)
Much like Neymar, however, part of the reason Juventus signed Ronaldo was to help them move on to the next level in Europe. (Juventus have the unenviable record of being the club to have lost the highest number of Champions League finals.)
When viewed from that light, Ronaldo’s move was a bit of a disappointment. The best Juventus achieved during his time was reaching the quarter-finals in 2018/19. The other two seasons saw the club knocked out at the last-16 stage. Hardly an ideal return on your €117m investment, an investment that was still being paid off more than a year after Ronaldo left.
And, so, it came about that despite the hopes of all parties involved that the marriage of convenience would lead to a fruitful relationship, this transfer ended up being something of a mixed bag.
4. Ousmane Dembélé (€220m)
Remember that question I asked at the outset: “If a player has been involved in several high-value transfers, this player must be worth the money, right?”
A part of the 2018 World Cup-winning France squad, Masour Ousmane Dembélé has been involved in three transfers over the course of his professional football career, only one of which meets our evaluation criteria. So let’s get right to it.
Dembélé to Barcelona (€135m): 2017 to 2023
Flush with cash from their sale of Neymar to PSG, Barcelona went on a spending spree during the 2017/18 season in a bid to try and compensate for the loss of a key attacking player, signing 7 players for a combined total of just over €375m.
As part of their outlay, Barcelona spent €135m to acquire the services of Dembélé, a player whose professional experience up to that point was limited to TWO seasons.
No, that was not a typo.
For some inexplicable reason, the higher-ups at Barcelona thought that it would be a good idea to spend €135m on a player whose career up to that point could be expressed in the following statistics:
- 58 league games (26 in 2015/16 at Stade Rennais, 32 in 2016/17 at Borussia Dortmund)
- 18 league goals (12 in 2015/16, 6 in 2016/17)
- 18 league assists (5 in 2015/16, 13 in 2016/17)
To put those figures into context, Neymar, the player Dembélé was ostensibly brought in to replace, had more goal contributions in the 2015/16 season alone (40 contributions; 24 goals and 16 assists) than Dembélé had in his entire professional career.
Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?
You and I might think so but the decision-makers clearly didn’t. Maybe they saw something beyond just basic statistics. Maybe they saw a player with abundant potential who would help deliver success to the club for many years to come, in which case, the money spent would end up being a bargain, if ever you could call €135m a bargain.
Well, how did things turn out? Did Dembélé, after agitating for the transfer, prove to be a success at Barcelona?
| Season | League Position | League Points (Max 114) |
|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 (without) | 1 | 91 |
| 2016/17 (without) | 2 | 90 |
| 2017/18 (with) | 1 | 93 |
| 2018/19 (with) | 1 | 87 |
| 2019/20 (with) | 2 | 82 |
| 2020/21 (with) | 3 | 79 |
| 2021/22 (with) | 2 | 73 |
| 2022/23 (with) | 1 | 88 |
| Avg 85.36 |
(While the 2023/24 season would be considered in the above data, it is still ongoing and has thus been omitted.)
Dembélé’s debut season saw the club instantly improve on their second-place finish from the previous season, finishing as champions. One highlight of the season was the points total of 91, which was the club’s highest since the 2014/15 season.
Not a bad way to start your time at a club.
The 2018/19 season saw more success come to Barcelona in the form of yet another title-winning campaign. While the points total was slightly lower (90 vs 91), that didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
There’s a proverb which, when translated, says that a good day is seen in the morning. If his first two seasons were anything to go by, it seemed, then, that Dembélé’s time at the club would be extremely fruitful.
Sadly, however, this proved to be something of a false dawn.
Two of the subsequent three seasons saw Barcelona hit unwanted lows. For two seasons running, 2020/21 and 2021/22, the club finished their league campaign with fewer than 80 points. Before the 2020/21 season, the last time the club had failed to reach 80 points was during the 2007/08 season, when the club earned a third-place finish with 67 points.
But in a testament to the club’s bouncebackability, Barcelona won the league during Dembélé’s last season at the club.
What of Dembélé, though? What role did he play during this six-year period?
| Season | Club League Goals | Goals | Assists1 | % Contribution2 | Match Winners3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 (without) | 112 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2016/17 (without) | 116 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2017/18 (with) | 99 | 3 | 7 | 10.10% | 0 |
| 2018/19 (with) | 90 | 8 | 4 | 13.33% | 3 |
| 2019/20 (with) | 86 | 1 | 0 | 1.16% | 0 |
| 2020/21 (with) | 85 | 6 | 3 | 10.59% | 2 |
| 2021/22 (with) | 68 | 1 | 13 | 20.59% | 0 |
| 2022/23 (with) | 70 | 5 | 7 | 17.14% | 4 |
As I mentioned earlier, Barcelona really did miss Neymar after he left. The number of goals scored by the club decreased by 48 between 2016/17 and 2021/22, with the bulk of that decrease coming between 2016/17 to 2017/18 and 2020/21 to 2021/22.
Sadly, the player who was brought in to replace Neymar didn’t have the sort of impact that many would no doubt have hoped for. Dembélé’s impact on the team was so negligible, in fact, that it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Barcelona won most of their league titles in spite of Dembélé. Why do I say that?
While this analysis isn’t by any means scientific, consider the following:
- During the 2017/18 season, Dembélé scored 0 match winners.
- While Dembélé scored 3 match winners during the 2018/19 season, if one were to take away the 9 points earned, Barcelona would still have won the league.
- The 2022/23 is the only season in which Dembélé had a meaningful contribution to the team’s success. Taking away the 12 points he earned would have left Barcelona in third place behind Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid.
Despite the role he played in the club’s success in 2022/23, Dembélé’s overall statistics don’t make for very cheerful reading. The only season in which he had any figure in the double digits was the 2021/22 season, when he assisted 13 goals, on the way to an overall contribution of 20.59%. The rest of the seasons saw a very underwhelming return.
During his six years at the club, he scored a grand total of 24 league goals, assisting a further 34, giving us an average of 4 goals and 5.67 assists a season.
For comparison, this total of 54 is slightly less than half of Neymar’s return of 117 in four years at the club; he scored a total of 68 goals, assisting 49.
One point to note regarding the above is that Dembélé was injured for most of the 2019/20 season, playing a total of 356 minutes spread out over 5 matches. Would he have had a chance to contribute more to the team’s chances had he stayed fit? Most definitely.
Reflecting on this transfer, can we say that it was a success? Surprisingly, yes. In a way.
During his time at the club, Dembélé lifted a total of 7 trophies:
- 2 x Spanish Cup (2017/18, 2020/21)
- 2 x Spanish Super Cup (2018/19, 2022/23)
- 3 x Spanish League (2017/18, 2018/19, 2022/23)
And yet, given his individual contributions, can we really say that Barcelona got value for the €135m spent?
Quick aside: Of the 6 other players who joined Barcelona along with Dembélé, including fellow €135m kid, Philippe Coutinho, precisely ZERO of them are still at the club.
Dembélé, for his part, got a pretty sweet deal.
He got to lift a few trophies and at the end of it all, got another big-money transfer. In the summer of 2023, he left Barcelona to join PSG for €50m. A few days after Dembélé joined, PSG sold Neymar to Al-Hilal. Funny how life works, isn’t it?
5. Álvaro Morata (€189m)
The current captain of the Spanish national football team, Álvaro Borja Morata Martín rounds off our list of players. For many, his position on this list comes as a bit of a surprise; it certainly was to me.
After all, he’s not typically talked about in anywhere near the same breath as some of the players we’ve considered so far. And in typical conversations about “great” modern-day strikers among casual football fans, you’d be hard-pressed to find his name mentioned. Yet, his goalscoring exploits compare pretty favourably against some of the more fashionable players.
Take, for example, a comparison with compatriot Fernando “El Niño” Torres, who was once described as “a deadly finisher and a player of such high class with the ball at his feet that he routinely makes the spectacular look ordinary.”
I initially expected this comparison to overwhelmingly favour Torres but I ended up pleasantly surprised:
| Appearances | Goals Scored | Assists | Avg. Goals | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spanish National Team (Torres) | 110 | 38 | 11 | 0.35 |
| Spanish National Team (Morata) | 71 | 34 | 7 | 0.48 |
| LaLiga (Torres) | 281 | 103 | 12 | 0.37 |
| LaLiga (Morata) | 176 | 70 | 14 | 0.40 |
| UEFA Champions League (Torres) | 79 | 20 | 10 | 0.25 |
| UEFA Champions League (Morata) | 82 | 28 | 12 | 0.34 |
| Premier League (Torres) | 212 | 85 | 39 | 0.40 |
| Premier League (Morata) | 47 | 16 | 6 | 0.34 |
Statistically, Morata more than holds his own in terms of goalscoring ability. Granted, these are somewhat cherry-picked figures, but I came away surprised at how, dare I say, underrated Morata is by many, myself included. (If you wish, you can view each player’s detailed statistics: Fernando Torres, Álvaro Morata)
Despite his respectable goalscoring record, Morata’s place on the list is a bit of a paradox. Unlike the other players like we’ve looked at, he hasn’t been involved in multiple big-money transfers. Rather, he has been involved in several (comparatively) lower-value transfers, including loan moves5, augmented by one big-money transfer, which we shall now consider.
Morata to Chelsea (€66m): 2017 to 2020
Before Romelu Lukaku went to Chelsea (for the second time), there were Timo Werner in 2020/21 and Gonzalo Higuaín in 2018/19.
And before all three of these ill-fated transfers came the transfer of Álvaro Morata to Chelsea.
Coming off the back of their title-winning 2016/17 season, Chelsea were set to lose the services of Diego Costa, the man whose 20 goals had fired the team to the title. (Funny story behind his departure.)
To make up for this loss in firepower, Chelsea turned to a player who was deemed surplus-to-requirements at Real Madrid despite having the second-best goalscoring ratio in LaLiga, behind only Lionel Messi albeit with far fewer goals.
And, so, Álvaro Morata was signed.
It is one of football’s truisms (and contradictions) that, despite their success on the pitch, Chelsea have lacked an imperious number 9 (centre-forward; striker) since the great Didier Drogba left the club for the first time in 2012. (That being said, Costa did come really close.)
Would Morata pick up the baton from Costa and run with it, giving Chelsea the number 9 they so desired? Or would he fall to the wayside like so many other strikers?
You can probably guess the answer to that question. However, I ask that you humour me as we look at the numbers behind his stay at Chelsea.
| Season | League Position | League Points (Max 114) |
|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 (without) | 10 | 50 |
| 2016/17 (without) | 1 | 93 |
| 2017/18 (with) | 5 | 70 |
| 2018/19 (with) | 3 | 72 |
| 2019/20 (with) | 4 | 66 |
| 2020/21 (without) | 4 | 67 |
| 2021/22 (without) | 3 | 74 |
| Avg. 70.29 |
Different season, same struggle.
Much like I did with Lukaku’s graph evaluating his time at Chelsea, I needed to tweak the graph slightly from other graphs used. Such was the team’s poor league performance in 2015/16.
To their credit, though, they immediately bounced back from their tenth-place finish with a league title win in 2016/17. However, based on their performance in subsequent seasons (including a twelfth-place finish in 2022/23), that league win is looking more and more like an outlier. And given their struggles this season (Chelsea are 7th with 3 games to play of the 2023/24 season), it seems like it might be their only league success for a while.
But I digress. Let’s get back to Morata.
During his three seasons at the club, Chelsea averaged 69.33 points, with their highest league position being a third-place finish in 2018/19. From a points perspective, their worst performance came in 2019/20.
League positions and points only tell half the story, so let’s look at Morata’s individual contributions to the cause.
| Season | Club League Goals | Goals | Assists1 | % Contribution2 | Match Winners3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 (without) | 59 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2016/17 (without) | 85 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2017/18 (with) | 62 | 11 | 6 | 27.42% | 5 |
| 2018/19 (with) | 63 | 5 | 0 | 7.94% | 2 |
| 2019/20 (with) | 69 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2020/21 (without) | 58 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
| 2021/22 (without) | 76 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | 0 |
As you probably guessed, Morata did not end up being the number 9 that Chelsea needed. The top two seasons in terms of goals scored came before and after his time at the club, with 85 goals scored in the title-winning 2016/17 season and 76 goals scored in 2021/22. In fact, in the four seasons before and after Morata, the team scored an average of 69.5 goals as compared to 64.67 goals scored between 2017/18 and 2019/20.
That being said, his debut season actually went pretty well. While he obviously didn’t score as many goals as would have been hoped for, his tally of 11 goals and 6 assists resulted in a goal contribution rate of 27.42%.
Again, not the sort of return that might have been hoped for, but a decent platform upon which to build. Sadly, that building was left unfinished.
You might have noticed that the 2019/20 season saw zero goals and assists from Morata. That ties in to the disappointing 2018/19 season, which saw Morata loaned to Atlético Madrid halfway through the season for a period of 18 months.
Something that struck me, though, is just how important his goals were, however limited they were in number.
Out of the 11 goals he scored in 2017/18, about half of them, 5, were match-winning goals. And out of the 5 goals he scored in 2018/19, about half of them, 2, were match winners. Without the points earned by Morata’s goals, Chelsea would have ended the seasons:
So what of his transfer to Chelsea as a whole? Was it a success?
Despite the rather unimpressive numbers posted, it was a relative success. While at the club, he lifted two trophies:
- 1 x FA Cup (2017/18)
- 1 x UEFA Europa League (2018/19)
(It must be noted, however, that Morata left halfway through the campaign, so he didn’t “lift” the trophy in the strictest sense of the word, he just got a winner’s medal by virtue of having featured and scored for Chelsea.)
While he didn’t set the world alight during his time at the club, Morata clearly played a role. And he can take comfort in the fact that he wasn’t the first striker to struggle at Chelsea. And as a few subsequent transfers showed, he wouldn’t be the last.
Would he have done better if he had felt “appreciated or loved” at Chelsea? We’ll never know.
Conclusion
“Does spending large amounts of money translate to success on the pitch?” That question has been the guiding light for this entire article.
The approach we took was to examine the most expensive players in football history. This approach has its downsides:
- As mentioned at the outset, this approach favours recent transfers.
Consider: The “oldest” transfer we’ve looked at was that of Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid in 2009, a mere 15 years ago. For a sport whose modern history goes back more than 150 years, a 15-year period ignores decades of sporting achievements.
For further emphasis: In a sport where players typically retire from the professional game between the ages of 31 and 35, none of the players examined in this article have retired. - This approach favours attacking players.
Consider: Out of the five players we’ve looked at, Ronaldo, Lukaku and Morata are primarily centre-forwards (strikers). Neymar and Dembélé are primarily left and right wingers respectively. Obviously, there are other positions apart from just attacking roles, so this approach does them a disservice. After all, a good midfield provides a platform for forwards to shine. And a forward’s goalscoring exploits are all for naught if the defenders and goalkeeper don’t do their job and keep the opposition at bay. - This approach only examines player performance in the domestic league. Other competitions where the player may have featured in are merely touched on, and only when it’s relevant to the player’s transfer or was one of the competitons won. This leaves out a sizeable number of games where the player may have scored and/or assisted.
Consider: During the 2012/13 season, Chelsea played 69 matches. If we were to look at just the league matches played during that season, we would end up leaving out 31 matches, almost an entire league season in itself.
So, what have the numbers shown us? Does more money mean more success? The answer is, it depends.
In cases where there was something of a plan, the transfers did prove to be successful.
Neymar’s transfer to Barcelona, Ronaldo’s transfer to Real Madrid and Lukaku’s transfer to Inter Milan were cases where a player was brought in with a semblance of a plan. And in all three cases, the transfer proved to be successful in footballing terms.But there were also cases of transfers taking place as a way of clubs trying to keep up with the Joneses, as it were.
Neymar’s transfer to Paris Saint-Germain and Ronaldo’s transfer to Juventus happened mainly because the decision-makers at the respective clubs hoped that these players would help the teams kick on and translate domestic dominance into success in Europe. In both cases, there was success. However, there was also disappointment, buyer’s remorse almost, that there was no European success.And then we have cases where there either was no plan or the plan was not given time to bear fruit.
In all of these cases, the transfers proved to be a waste of money. A waste that the clubs might still be paying for, like in the case of Lukaku to Chelsea.
To conclude, it seems, therefore, that if there’s a solid reason and proper planning, the higher the transfer outlay, the more likely a club is to be successful. Unless that club is Barcelona. Or Chelsea.
P.S.: I know I said that last part in jest but, barring Neymar’s move, many of Barcelona’s big money transfers just do not work out. In addition to Dembélé’s transfer, two recent examples are:
- Philippe Coutinho: €135m in 2017. (No longer at the club; left for €20m.)
- Antoine Griezmann: €120m in 2019. (No longer at the club; left for €22m.)
And that’s it. That’s the end of this long article. If you’ve read it all in one go, I admire the effort.
Now I need to figure out what comes next in the Fun With Numbers series.
Until the next one.
Footnotes
For a basic understanding of what constitutes an assist, see this Wikipedia page. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9
”% Contribution” is the total number of goals and assists contributed by a player expressed as a percentage of the total goals scored by the team. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9
To best understand the idea behind a match-winning goal, consider the following examples:
- In a match that ends 1-0, the match winner is, obviously, the only goal.
- In a match that ends 2-0, the match winner is the first goal.
- In a match that ends 4-2, the match winner is the third goal scored by the winning team.
In cases where points earned by a player are calculated, only the match winners are considered. Points earned in a draw are NOT factored in. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9
Season shortened by COVID-19. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
A loan is a temporary transfer of a player to a club other than the club to which the player is currently contracted. The player remains under contract at Club A but spends a period of time playing for Club B. Such a transfer may involve a fee, or it may be free. ↩ ↩2