Inevitable or absurd? Football experts weigh in on bloated transfer prices

Birkirkara’s recent triumph over Scottish giants Hearts coupled with Valletta’s narrow defeat to Serbian champions Red Star Belgrade marked the most successful adventure for Maltese clubs in a European competition. However, Malta Football Players Association official Konrad Sultana sees these results in a more ominous context – the decline of football’s ‘middle ground’ as the upshot of the ever-increasing spending power of larger clubs. 

“Look at how Birkirkara beat Hearts and how Valletta gave Red Star a run for their money; they would not have been able to achieve such results in the past,” he told MaltaToday. “It’s clear that the gap between the best leagues and those in the middle is increasing and that those in the middle are slipping further down. At this rate, all the top football talent will be conglomerated into four European leagues. Indeed, pressure is growing on UEFA to replace the Champions League with a European Super League for the top few leagues.”   

Transfer fees for footballers have reached dizzying heights, and will smash the €100 million ceiling when Paul Pogba’s move from Juventus to Manchester United goes through. It is a grotesque sum of money, but perhaps justifiable in a market where 29-year old Argentine striker Gonzalo Higuain is valued at €90 million and teenage Portuguese midfielder Renato Sanches can go for €35 million. 

“I don’t think Higuain is worth €90 million; if so, then Thomas Muller is worth €200 million,” Konrad Sultana said bemusedly. “However, while these transfer fees seem extraordinary for people looking at them from the outside, at the end of the day clubs are run as businesses. They look at transfers as investments, with the fees recouped through image rights, merchandise and advertising fees.” 

Indeed, Manchester United has reportedly already earned €90 million from shirt sales for their new superstar signing, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, which could effectively balance their expenses on signing Paul Pogba. 

“At the end of the day, it’s all about basic economics of supply and demand,” Sultana said. “The Premier League’s new TV rights deal has exploded clubs’ revenue, and so long as their income keeps increasing then players’ price-tags will keep adjusting upwards. 

“I admire clubs like Leicester, Dortmund and Atletico Madrid for developing young players rather than splashing the cash, but then again they use a different business model – based on selling their players for a profit.”

MFPA secretary-general and former international defender Carlo Mamo argued that clubs’ income hinges on their success on the pitch, which ultimately means that they must constantly have the best possible players on the payroll. When a player like Pogba emerges, the chances are that many big teams will be interested, which would allow his club to set a high bidding price.

“Clubs are ready to keep on paying huge wages and transfer fees to try and acquire the best players, so as to keep on achieving good results,” he said. “With good results, the club will make more profit. It’s all about demand and supply.” 

Angelo Chetcuti, a sports lawyer who yesterday launched an unsuccessful bid for the MFA’s vice-presidency, said that the upward trend in footballer prices is likely to keep going up as football keeps growing as an industry and tapping into new markets. 

“At this level, sport is merely the vehicle, the platform, in the same way cinema or music are for celebrity actors and pop starts who similarly earn exorbitant amounts of money,” he told MaltaToday. “The sporting aspect relates to the skill and performance the elite athlete possesses that makes them so much in demand. The rest is pure economics. Clubs do their homework. They seek to balance out those sums by exploiting the marketing potential that the athlete guarantees. That, in turn, has an impact on demand through merchandising and the sale of TV and image rights. The more stars a club can sign, the more it is followed by fans, and the likelier it is to advance in competitions that bring in prize and TV money.

“Is this ok? Like most of us mortals I do think that these sums have become ridiculously high, but I hardly think the process can be reversed any time soon. It is nothing but a reflection of our society, resting almost exclusively on supply and demand tenets.”