Hey ! I'm a ToulouseFC fan ! Thank you for covering us, I'm real glad with how the club has been worked since our takeover in 2020 ! The whole club is going better, with better recruitment ofc, but also a better atmosphere at the Stadium, better communication and all of that : it's a great time to be a ToulouseFC fan (except our last 2 ligue 1 games those were bad). Let's go win the coupe de France !
I still can't believe that Branco van der Boomen has reached these heights. We had him at Willem II on loan with option to buy in 06/07. He's an old youth player so I had a soft spot but he definetly needed to grow a lot even at the second level of dutch football at the time. I'm still check up on him from time to time and saw the now dutch enclave at your club also doing well. Zakaria Aboukhlal is also a youth product from Willem II but he got snagged by AZ before making it to the first team. Great to see some of our youngsters help you guys out.
The fact that my club FC Midtjylland, which was in fact one of the first clubs in europe to try this moneyball approach (due to our owner being Matthew Benham, the owner of Brentford), frustrates me even more that we let Nicolaisen go for so cheap....
Maybe because they didn’t need him as they had other centre backs available or their analytic models are different. He was on loan at Portsmouth before he was sold to Toulouse so perhaps they didn’t see him in the same light as the other centre backs at the club
@@tombardsley3081 yeah they didn’t which was weird. The same summer we sold our best defender to Japan, and then Nicolaisen was sold to Toulouse the same summer, and we brought in a horrible Brazilian centerback to replace him. A horrible decision imo, by a board who usually knows what they’re doing. Think he scored 4 goals as well in a season with, very limited playing time for us which just makes it more weird
@@pllegrotten7640 yeah. At least you guys are in and around the top of the league every year. Only difference is this year where Nordsjælland have come out of nowhere. Plus I guess Benham had the priority of getting Brentford into the premier league
@@tombardsley3081 yeah true. Been a weird one for us this year. Very good campaign in Europe, but really struggled in the league so we just have to stay in the European places this season, which is disappointing of our standards. And yeah Bentham is more invested in the Brentford project, I wouldn’t be surprised if he sold the club in the near future tbh
@@pllegrotten7640 Analytics approach is not perfect but it doesn’t take into all the biases humans have when analyzing a player based on the eye test alone and therefore it’s likely to be more accurate at player evaluation - even though it doesn’t always get things right.
As a Belgian, you're actually pretty close with your Dutch pronunciation. It's far better, as you say, than 90% of English speakers. Keep it up (Brecht Dejaeghere played for my club in Belgium)
And lastly, definitely worth mentioning Aboukhlal. Yes, he came from a known league in the Eredivisie, but he was a substitute for AZ and he cost less than some other signings like birmancevic. Their fans were thankful for Toulouse ridding him from them and now he’s starring at Toulouse and he even scored a goal in the World Cup for morrocco.
I hope this becomes so widespread in a lot of leagues. It's really cool to see that you can compete at least nationally without putting your club in high risk of bankrupcy
If everyone is playing moneyball, then no one is. The whole idea is identifying market inefficiencies and exploiting them for success. Once everyone identifies your strategy, the market corrects for it. Moneyball works in American sports where the gap in spending between the top teams and bottom teams is a factor of 2 or 3. It won't work long term in a place like Ligue 1 where PSG have as much as 30 times the budget of the smaller teams. The cieling of success for a club like Toulousse is finishing 2nd and then having your team dismantled in the summer by the vultures with money.
I do think this will be an interesting experiment and especially prescient because unlike MLB. Football is basically full of New York Yankees, LA Dodgers and Boston Red Sox. Made more relevant by Z's video a few days ago about the money in the Premier League. There is also the part where it will be interesting to see if teams like Toulouse can do what the Athletics could not. Win championships.
@@Subzeropole Yeah. The Red Sox quickly caught on and used Moneyball strategies to win a World Series and then everyone else started doing it. Only the Tampa Bay Rays are a consistently competitive poor team. Look what happened to the Royals. Win a World Series and then are garbage almost immediately. And with pro/rel getting your side gutted can literally destroy the club.
I’m quite surprised more clubs with limited transfer budgets don’t invest heavily in data. I’m a Middlesbrough fan, we’ve never had a great deal of money, so it would make sense for a club our size with a minimal budget to push hard down the data road
@@Subzeropole Liverpool did this ( afcorse in the prem its on a bigger scale but they where poor compared to the other top teams ) and they won their league and more, so it all goes down to the players you got, some luck and your ability to keep the player for long enogh to win the league and then sell them for good money.
Another issue with moneyball in Football is that the level is different. If the Oakland A’s sign a player that used to play for the Twins they know How that player will perform at their level. But if you sign a player from the greek second level you’ll have no idea How that player will perform in the french top division
Good point. The premier league counter to that is my club Everton. We buy players with “premier league experience” in the hope they’ll do well and that always costs a premium and hasn’t worked for us in the last 7 seasons
The transfer of Andy Carroll to Liverpool was interesting data wise, he had scored 11 goals in 19 games for Newcastle (5 headed goals) and won 7.5 headers per 90 mins. They signed Stewart downing with 2.3 key passes per 90 during his last season at Villa and was known for crossing lots... so the idea was to get Downing to produce lots of crosses for Carroll and the data supported it but in reality it didn't work at all!
I used your mystery kits for Christmas, and got Toulouse as the jersey. Been following them since and loved it, so funny to see my Toulouse/Zealand experience come full circle
Brighton was the first to adopt data analytics (moneyball system) in the Epl and Brentford took it a step further with removing their youth team set up. You should look into the two owners and the drama between them
Speaking out loud Not having a youth team probably ain't the smartest thing, how Brighton's done is better than Brentford. Brighton will always quality players in from wherever because of data will drive Brentford forward which how long can it be successful
@@McBigP13 I think Brighton and Brentford are similarly run clubs. (the history of their owners is interesting), but they have subtle differences. Brighton are by far the biggest club in their city and have a large talent pool of youth players to choose from, therefore it makes sense for them to invest in their academy. Whereas Brentford operate in London and have to compete for youth players with the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs, West Ham. They are unable to compete with them so it does not make economical sense for them to invest in an academy.
From my perspective, moneyball started really being a thing around the year 2014, when teams like Leicester, Palace, Swansea, and Sheff Utd made it back to the Prem and a few of them enjoyed a short stint near the upper third of the table.
@@danieltyrer3191 I think if they are established enough it would start to make sense to bring it back. As a Championship or League side I totally understand the perspective. But they are a big enough name now that I do belive they could compete. I think Crystal Palaces youth academy is a productive one despite their lower tier reputation. Sometimes all it takes is one good player to come through at a high level to pay for the academy. Especially with the english tax & homegrown rules. English homegrown talent is only going to get more expensive as the PL gets richer.
@@devinmcallister6873 huh really?? Didnt know that, since how the british taunting crystal palace is the go too academy at the moment for english player generation ala liked how Southampton is..
I am a data analyst for the former football agency of brecht. many clubs already work with data, in Belgium alone Union, Leuven, Anderlecht, Westerlo, zulte waregem, Genk, Antwerp, Club Brugge, but there are also many clubs abroad.
Toulouse has now made it to the semifinals of the French Cup (Coupe de France) which is the biggest national cup competition in the world. They'll play against the underdog Annecy, so they'll have a real shot at reaching the final. It seems to pay off!
You could also have mentioned (when talking about Billy Beane) that he is involved with Barnsley and that he has a friendship with Comolli. RedBird also own a portion of Liverpool, specifically, FSG. Billy Beane is more involved in soccer than some realise.
Billy Beane also owns a 5% share of Dutch AZ Alkmaar which I just recently found out. The recruitment they've done in the past few years has been outstanding
Hi ! I live in Toulouse and actually the local newspapers talked a lot about Moneyball after the few first good results the team got early in the season. This is such a joy witnessing this adventure from the stadium seats !
As a Belgian, I am offended. I don't believe one second 10% of the US knows where Belgium is. Hell, I don't believe 10% knows it is a country. Most probably think Brussels is a country.
Happy to finally see Toulouse on the rise again and with a potentially sustainable financial model 💜🧡 Not technically a "fan" and also from Germany, but oh the hours on end I once spent as a teenager with Toulouse playing a football manager will always keep this club dear to my heart 😅
I think its a creative approach to the game. Recently was thinking about how football should incorporate analytics a bit more into the sport. For sure going to keep up with these teams to see how they do with this approach. Great video!
Hey Z, definitely also look into Union SG. They have ben doing the same in Belgium, if not even better. They ended up first in the regular competition in their first year in the top division and are confirming this year again sitting second in the league and topping their group in the Europa league ahead of Union Berlin and Braga.
Loving this! Toulouse FC has become my ‘French Team’ since two seasons ago I took them from Ligue2 to winning the champions league in 5 seasons in FM. Mostly done by building on some great youth players. I left them to go to Man Utd for 3 seasons before returning to Toulouse for another 5 seasons of multiple CL wins and Ligue1 domination, totally dethroning the mighty PSG. Since then, I watch Toulouse FC regularly and have been fascinated with how they run the club with what seems like a very modest budget. Only FM can do this to someone. Never even been to France but one day I will to go and watch Toulouse 😁.
Really like the latest signings for Toulouse, such as Warren Kamanzi. He did a good job marking Messi in the match against PSG 5:37 An exciting prospect!
AC Milan has a similar approach where there's scouting department who go and scout players on the pitch and the data department that provide the numbers. AFAIK they don't directly interact to avoid bias, but Maldini, Massara and the chief scout Moncada have visibility to everything. In practice it means that if a player looks good based on data, they send actual scouts to check the player out and the other way around as well. Maldini & co also assess players personalities and family to try to avoid unprofessional players and troublemakers. Oh yeah - guess who owns AC Milan? RedBird Capital who also owns Toulouse.
Yeah I was really impressed when Milan managed to find a little known youth player named Zlatan. He mainly comes on as a sub right now but I see big things in his future
Actually a huge chunk of clubs now use data but only few use efficiently. Chelsea actually has a brilliant model where they scout youth players take them to their academy and develop but they were idiots in not using those good players and leaving them out. This is where Arsenal smarted up now. They are using their academy players and have figured out a loan system where they can send them to develop. Arsenal tried data approach as well but it didn't succeed so they are now trying Chelsea method by poaching good academy prospects.
I'm from England, but one of my best friends is from France and he is a HUGE Toulouse fan and for years now he always talks to me about them, he knows alot about the club and i could see from what he was telling me that they are pretty much the Brentford of France and in 2021 i really wanted them to get promoted to Ligue 1 because i think they deserved it, but they missed out, they ended up getting promoted the season after though, i was telling him about how with the team that they have, that after they got promoted, they should be challenging for Midtable in 22/23, and sure enough they are! they basically ended up becoming my second team and i've always keeping up with their matches and watch their highlights since 2021, he always tells me Toulouse's biggest issue is with keeping their players as they tend to lose their good players, hopefully in the future they will continue with their moneyball philosophy and keep getting better and better and thus keep more of their stars. they lost Manu Kone to Munchen gladbach a while ago who he would also always tell me about how good he is, and now alot of top clubs want him.
As a Toulouse fan i gotta say that all the revolution since 2020 it's incredible. I hope it can continue, but the real questions now are contract renovations of players like Van Den Boomen and Spierings, that are atracting interest from bigger clubes that can offer much higher salaries. And recently MacFarlane left the clube and the latest information says that he will be with Man City for some time. I really hope that all this revolution means that the club can continue to apply the Moneyball method to keep finding great players, even without MacFarlane. Great video.
With a higher reputation & being established in Ligue 1 hopefully they can attract a higher caliber of undervalued players or youth prospects. If I was a talented sporting director & wanted to actively pursue the moneyball method, Toulouse would be an extremely attractive option now that you know the club will actively support & enable that method of recruitment.
Redbird has connections to a lot of the right people in the recruitment business thanks to Zelus, they should be able to find a replacement for Brendan just fine.
They brought in Denis Genreau, an Australian from an average MacArthur team in the a-league, where he was focal for Toulouse in their promotion season.
The effect of moneyball in baseball is that everyone caught on and when the rich teams started using it the advantage was gone, with the one exception of the Tampa Bay Rays possibly. The very rich Red Sox adopted those methods second and immediately won the World Series. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Most teams use analytics at the Major League level at this point, and some of them pay the big bucks for it, which is why it can't really be described as moneyball anymore. What sets Tampa apart currently is their hyperfocus on platoon splits, minor league scouting, and prospect development. That way they can pay cheap veterans to basically combine into "one" higher value player, they can screw over other teams *cough*Pirates*cough* in trades, and they can make sure the prospects they trade for develop to keep the system churning.
I recently was wondering why Toulouse is doing so well with a lot of seemingly random signed players. Great video, thanks! Billy Beane has been with AZ (the Netherlands) in an advisory role since 2015 and has been a minority shareholder since 2020. They're also interesting to look at.
The Moneyball principle was never about "data / analytics" it is about finding a *different* way of doing things that generates value for either players or tactics. The appointment of a "personality expert" shows this exact point. Data / Analytics was just the method that the Oakland A's hit on to create value in a market full of undervalued players.
During the pandemic Arsenal rebuilt their entire recruiting department to be analytics based instead of traditional scouting. It's a big part of why they have one of the most well rounded squads in the premier league. They're easily able to shift from a high profile target that goes elsewhere and plugin a very similar player so quickly. They're the youngest squad in the premier league and look like they're be good for years to come.
Also worth mentioning that Brendan macfarlane has already left the club for england[this was known at time of release though I can understand the video was probably already made] French outlets say it’s Manchester city but we won’t know for sure until he starts up there or updates his linked in lol
Another example of teams buying from overlooked/lower divisions is that of Royale Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium. They got promoted to the First division in 2021 and then finished as runners up in 2022.
Andy Carroll was purchased because of data analytics, at the time he was involved in a high proportion of Newcastle's goals so statistically it made sense, Jordan Henderson was another such signing at the time. Clearly both the data analytics and stats collected were more unrefined back then, Henderson was criticised for sideways and backwards passing for years which inflate his pass success rates and it's more recent that progressive pass rates have actually become more important, and potentially why he's been coached into attempting that more.
Football is different. It's very traditional and those in the highest positions like to keep it that way. Clubs won't make the change to moneyball because it's not traditional, not to mention it's expensive to actually implement. No one is going to redo their whole model because Brentford did it or Toulouse did it, but if Bayern or Real Madrid did it and then rattled of a dynasty of trophies then you'd see a bunch of clubs rushing to do the same. I love moneyball and wish more clubs would implement it but football people are stuck in their ways.
@@Benito264 did you notice that these changes took place AFTER they were bought out? Which means they are no longer poor anymore? Trust me it's not cheap to implement this strategy.
Don't fully agree with your take. Money Ball pays for itself if you're avoiding players with the wrong personality/ poor stats on long expensive contracts
I disagree. There was a really interesting interview recently with Michael Lewis on the Freakonomics podcast. He speaks about Moneyball a little. Baseball (BB) lent itself to a "moneyball" strategy because of the nature of the game itself. It's a 1-v-1 event every pitch It's much easier (not easy, but easier) to use numbers to predict events based on the probability of their likelihood in baseball, than in flow sports like football, basketball, or soccer (to name but a few). You could find players in BB that gave you the same odds of an event happening at a fraction of the price of big name players. This was because the likelihoods can be calculated. Flow sports? Not so much. Are analytics being used in all sports? Of course. Are they getting more sophisticated? Of course. Are clubs averse to using these strategies because of "tradition'? No. The models are simply not that good in a lot of sports. If the models worked, and they reliably brought wins for less cost, clubs would use it. Might they get there? Sure. But it will be a while given the nature of these types of sports. Objective analytics of a soccer player can certainly tell you something. But reliably predicting the number of wins a given player provides per $ is something else entirely.
A lot of clubs are applying these principles but they are not the top dogs and that's why they need that. Why would City for example try to go through hoops to get good players at low prices when they can get the best of the best?
Atalanta has also been scouting the middle of the pack teams in the Netherlands. But in the Netherlands they always look at what they can develope with the player in stead of what they can already be great at and make that a steady part of the player
Hey, Toulouse FC fan here ! Funny that you talk about us at this time because Brendan McFarlane just left the club I am not that confident for the future, I hope Damien Comolli knows what he does
Maybe look at Feyenoord and Arne slot especially what we’ve been doing with 12 new players is absolutely crazy when you also look at all the players who left after the uecl final we have 3 players left from the players who started last year and leading in the eredivisie and in the Ro16 of the Europa league by knocking out Lazio
Analytics is the past in American sports but it’s the future in world soccer. Those clubs that don’t employ an analytics based approach to player evaluation and management will become significantly less efficient than its competition.
Im a Marseille fan and i can tell you that Toulouse is definitely playing some good football. Let’s not forget the coach who implements everything to often coaches get criticised for the way the teams play. Montanier is doing a good job probably Toulouse will stay in ligue 1 and they can still win the French cup they are in semi final.
Don't forget that Brighton are another example of a "moneyball"-esque club - the owner is Tony Bloom, who is also a poker player and professional gambler - his company Starlizard heavily relies on data to identify profitable betting opportunities, and the club uses similar data streams to identify new players and staff...
That's the national shirt of Curacao, people from the island like me called it Korsou iam so proud at this point that a youtuber is wearing our national collors. Thx @Zeaand for making my day.
To be fair to Commoli - the Andy Carroll purchase was actually sort of a moneyball signing, just at a club with a decent budget. They bought him and Stewart Downing because they thought that the most effective brand of football was wingplay with a big striker. Hence they bought a winger who crossed a tonne and quite well statistically and a striker who won a lot of headers statistically. It just turned out they weren't right about that being the style that would work for them and they abandoned it, which obviously made both look like poor signings.
Very good video dude. It all makes sense. I think simply the human biases (in all sorts of ways) play the biggest role in traditional scouting but this in some way is more effective. HOWEVER....I still believe the sport is too complicated and even somewhat based on lucky (or unlucky) moments, for real 'moneyball' scouting/transfer-strategy to really produce championship teams, let alone legacy squads that dominate for years.
Hey, nice cover of the Toulouse Story and its success that I hope will go on.. For information Brendan MacFarlane is sadly leaving the club for another one that has yet to be disclosed.
It's also very important to understand what caused the Oakland A's to switch to the money ball model. They lost arguably two of the best hitters in baseball Giambi and Damon to huge contracts they could never afford thus forcing them to replace those players with the small money they had.
Being of age and how to manage the sequence of returns in those early periods is what seems quite scary in the current market. The market is never a loser in a twenty year cycle, but the 2000s decade scenario scares me and could really disrupt my retirement. When you are no longer accumulating but withdrawing its hard to be anything but cautious.
Question for anyone who can answer: would it be possible to implement some sort of "Moneyball" style of team building/managing at a US high school level? Not sure how that would work, but I'm looking for anything that can help turn my program around!
You'll need some kind of analytics, at least some knowledge of Python. Check out the modules like `mlpsoccer` and `kloppy`. You'd also need some tracking devices that would gather the data. I don't think there is any free and open tool to generate event data from broadcast videos yet.
That Liverpool squad should have been benchmark in terms of moneyball type team, but that failed project effectively in that format (especially for big clubs) made some much needed for some fine tuning in terms of moneyball team iterations..
Redbird capital recently bought ac Milan, I hope they can bring a little of this moneyball mentality in. I wonder what could happen with the team resources that are way bigger that Toulouse’s
Toulouse also has a large capture market so they have a better chance of building a good youth recruitment and expanded fanbase. Van Den Boomen is actually being mentioned for a Netherlands call up. Will be interesting to see if Koeman puts him in the pre selection at least. On a side note he is originally from my club Heerenveen.
the fact that the big clubs are only spending more and more money yet the leagues seem to be getting closer and more balanced is basically all because of moneyball. without moneyball every top 5 league would be a one team league
Hearing you butcher the Dutch and Belgian names was great! Also, great video, would love to see more clubs take this approach rather than spending too many millions on players with one good season...
You mentioned Liverpool signing Andy Carroll.. Funnily enough this was an earlier football attempt at moneyball it was just done REALLY badly. That DOF basically decided that the underlying numbers he thought were important were succesful crosses and effectiveness from crosses. They then proceeded to sign Stuart Downing and Andy Carroll on that basis with the idea being they were just going to cross the ball in and score headers over and over again. So he has always been into data he just wasn't very good at it...
Surely the moneyball technique only works if no one else is using it? If more and more clubs use this approach, then the whole thing falls down, a players value will then be dictated by their data/stats and so all of a sudden most valuable players will be the ones with the best data… and the clubs with the most money will be able to produce the most in depth data… etc etc
Hi Z, great video! Not trying to critique your pronunciation of Dejaegere (because I know our dutch/belgian names don't make sense for english-speakers), but trying to help: it's pronounced something like duh-YAH-guhruh. Hope it helps!
Throwing shade at that Director of football from Liverpool, if he signed Carroll he must have been there when they signed Suarez, if not for some biting that probably would have won them the league
To see another of my favourite sports be covered... you love to see it although thats the problem with moneyball it can only get you so far, as much as I'd love to be wrong theres too much money in the game to win the moneyball way
So, this is a video about a team that is succeeding when everyone was expecting them Tolouse...
Thierry Henry mouth quiver🤦♂️🤣🤣🤣
That's genius
Hey ! I'm a ToulouseFC fan ! Thank you for covering us, I'm real glad with how the club has been worked since our takeover in 2020 ! The whole club is going better, with better recruitment ofc, but also a better atmosphere at the Stadium, better communication and all of that : it's a great time to be a ToulouseFC fan (except our last 2 ligue 1 games those were bad). Let's go win the coupe de France !
Ahhh, my kindred soul.
Gladbach Fan here, thanks for Koné! He’s a gem and will go to a big club in summer for 30-60 mil, you probably get some of that as well! 💚💜
Also something to know is that Brendan Macfarlane just left the club for Manchester City
@@jan_dr18 How has Nathan Ngoumou been playing with you ? He went to Gladbach around deadline day this summer. Glad that Manu is playing well with you
I still can't believe that Branco van der Boomen has reached these heights. We had him at Willem II on loan with option to buy in 06/07. He's an old youth player so I had a soft spot but he definetly needed to grow a lot even at the second level of dutch football at the time. I'm still check up on him from time to time and saw the now dutch enclave at your club also doing well. Zakaria Aboukhlal is also a youth product from Willem II but he got snagged by AZ before making it to the first team. Great to see some of our youngsters help you guys out.
Imagine if we are all in a reality in which the Toulouse manager is just playing his latest FM save.
@@Benito264 exactly lol
@@Benito264 add in Urs Fischer from Union Berlin
even having is team in purple 😂
that would explain Messi 's move to Inter Miami
The fact that my club FC Midtjylland, which was in fact one of the first clubs in europe to try this moneyball approach (due to our owner being Matthew Benham, the owner of Brentford), frustrates me even more that we let Nicolaisen go for so cheap....
Maybe because they didn’t need him as they had other centre backs available or their analytic models are different. He was on loan at Portsmouth before he was sold to Toulouse so perhaps they didn’t see him in the same light as the other centre backs at the club
@@tombardsley3081 yeah they didn’t which was weird. The same summer we sold our best defender to Japan, and then Nicolaisen was sold to Toulouse the same summer, and we brought in a horrible Brazilian centerback to replace him. A horrible decision imo, by a board who usually knows what they’re doing. Think he scored 4 goals as well in a season with, very limited playing time for us which just makes it more weird
@@pllegrotten7640 yeah. At least you guys are in and around the top of the league every year. Only difference is this year where Nordsjælland have come out of nowhere. Plus I guess Benham had the priority of getting Brentford into the premier league
@@tombardsley3081 yeah true. Been a weird one for us this year. Very good campaign in Europe, but really struggled in the league so we just have to stay in the European places this season, which is disappointing of our standards.
And yeah Bentham is more invested in the Brentford project, I wouldn’t be surprised if he sold the club in the near future tbh
@@pllegrotten7640 Analytics approach is not perfect but it doesn’t take into all the biases humans have when analyzing a player based on the eye test alone and therefore it’s likely to be more accurate at player evaluation - even though it doesn’t always get things right.
As a Belgian, you're actually pretty close with your Dutch pronunciation. It's far better, as you say, than 90% of English speakers. Keep it up (Brecht Dejaeghere played for my club in Belgium)
How do u say Dejaegere
As a French I can't say the same. 😅
But I know how difficult it is for an english speaker.
@@ratedpending Just say "the hunter". It is what it means, we gave up trying to explain Dutch language to Americans long time ago.
@@ewouteveraert5174 OH okay so it's those two words combined rather than one word, ty
dont want to hate on it, but it wasn't close at all
The leap by Martinez in the still shot is inhuman
And lastly, definitely worth mentioning Aboukhlal. Yes, he came from a known league in the Eredivisie, but he was a substitute for AZ and he cost less than some other signings like birmancevic. Their fans were thankful for Toulouse ridding him from them and now he’s starring at Toulouse and he even scored a goal in the World Cup for morrocco.
I hope this becomes so widespread in a lot of leagues. It's really cool to see that you can compete at least nationally without putting your club in high risk of bankrupcy
If everyone is playing moneyball, then no one is. The whole idea is identifying market inefficiencies and exploiting them for success. Once everyone identifies your strategy, the market corrects for it.
Moneyball works in American sports where the gap in spending between the top teams and bottom teams is a factor of 2 or 3. It won't work long term in a place like Ligue 1 where PSG have as much as 30 times the budget of the smaller teams. The cieling of success for a club like Toulousse is finishing 2nd and then having your team dismantled in the summer by the vultures with money.
I do think this will be an interesting experiment and especially prescient because unlike MLB. Football is basically full of New York Yankees, LA Dodgers and Boston Red Sox. Made more relevant by Z's video a few days ago about the money in the Premier League.
There is also the part where it will be interesting to see if teams like Toulouse can do what the Athletics could not.
Win championships.
@@Subzeropole Yeah. The Red Sox quickly caught on and used Moneyball strategies to win a World Series and then everyone else started doing it. Only the Tampa Bay Rays are a consistently competitive poor team. Look what happened to the Royals. Win a World Series and then are garbage almost immediately. And with pro/rel getting your side gutted can literally destroy the club.
I’m quite surprised more clubs with limited transfer budgets don’t invest heavily in data. I’m a Middlesbrough fan, we’ve never had a great deal of money, so it would make sense for a club our size with a minimal budget to push hard down the data road
@@Subzeropole Liverpool did this ( afcorse in the prem its on a bigger scale but they where poor compared to the other top teams ) and they won their league and more, so it all goes down to the players you got, some luck and your ability to keep the player for long enogh to win the league and then sell them for good money.
Another issue with moneyball in Football is that the level is different. If the Oakland A’s sign a player that used to play for the Twins they know How that player will perform at their level. But if you sign a player from the greek second level you’ll have no idea How that player will perform in the french top division
The Toulouse data system covers this to avoid such an issue. They are able to translate a player's stats from a given division to Ligue1.
@@MoRg31 Yeah, but the players ability to adapt to a new country and a new league is not something it can take into account
@@KeyToAwesomness you're right, this is why in complement to the data they also do a background check of the player to see if he would fit in
Good point. The premier league counter to that is my club Everton. We buy players with “premier league experience” in the hope they’ll do well and that always costs a premium and hasn’t worked for us in the last 7 seasons
That's a great point if you ignore the existence of the lower baseball leagues.
The transfer of Andy Carroll to Liverpool was interesting data wise, he had scored 11 goals in 19 games for Newcastle (5 headed goals) and won 7.5 headers per 90 mins. They signed Stewart downing with 2.3 key passes per 90 during his last season at Villa and was known for crossing lots... so the idea was to get Downing to produce lots of crosses for Carroll and the data supported it but in reality it didn't work at all!
It missed the second magic part - value which the Carroll transfer had none.
They both ended up at West Ham and didn’t do too bad together
Which why I don't believe in crosses, tactics and principles like tiki-taka or positional play are more efficient imo
I used your mystery kits for Christmas, and got Toulouse as the jersey. Been following them since and loved it, so funny to see my Toulouse/Zealand experience come full circle
Isn't that curaçao 🇨🇼
Brighton was the first to adopt data analytics (moneyball system) in the Epl and Brentford took it a step further with removing their youth team set up. You should look into the two owners and the drama between them
Speaking out loud
Not having a youth team probably ain't the smartest thing, how Brighton's done is better than Brentford.
Brighton will always quality players in from wherever because of data will drive Brentford forward which how long can it be successful
@@McBigP13 I think Brighton and Brentford are similarly run clubs. (the history of their owners is interesting), but they have subtle differences.
Brighton are by far the biggest club in their city and have a large talent pool of youth players to choose from, therefore it makes sense for them to invest in their academy.
Whereas Brentford operate in London and have to compete for youth players with the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs, West Ham. They are unable to compete with them so it does not make economical sense for them to invest in an academy.
From my perspective, moneyball started really being a thing around the year 2014, when teams like Leicester, Palace, Swansea, and Sheff Utd made it back to the Prem and a few of them enjoyed a short stint near the upper third of the table.
@@danieltyrer3191 I think if they are established enough it would start to make sense to bring it back. As a Championship or League side I totally understand the perspective. But they are a big enough name now that I do belive they could compete. I think Crystal Palaces youth academy is a productive one despite their lower tier reputation. Sometimes all it takes is one good player to come through at a high level to pay for the academy. Especially with the english tax & homegrown rules. English homegrown talent is only going to get more expensive as the PL gets richer.
@@devinmcallister6873 huh really?? Didnt know that, since how the british taunting crystal palace is the go too academy at the moment for english player generation ala liked how Southampton is..
I am a data analyst for the former football agency of brecht. many clubs already work with data, in Belgium alone Union, Leuven, Anderlecht, Westerlo, zulte waregem, Genk, Antwerp, Club Brugge, but there are also many clubs abroad.
Toulouse has now made it to the semifinals of the French Cup (Coupe de France) which is the biggest national cup competition in the world. They'll play against the underdog Annecy, so they'll have a real shot at reaching the final. It seems to pay off!
You could also have mentioned (when talking about Billy Beane) that he is involved with Barnsley and that he has a friendship with Comolli. RedBird also own a portion of Liverpool, specifically, FSG. Billy Beane is more involved in soccer than some realise.
they also own ac milan
Billy Beane also owns a 5% share of Dutch AZ Alkmaar which I just recently found out. The recruitment they've done in the past few years has been outstanding
Who’s here after Toulouse won the French cup? With a DOMINATING 5-1 win vs Nantes in the final
Hi ! I live in Toulouse and actually the local newspapers talked a lot about Moneyball after the few first good results the team got early in the season. This is such a joy witnessing this adventure from the stadium seats !
As a Belgian, I am offended. I don't believe one second 10% of the US knows where Belgium is. Hell, I don't believe 10% knows it is a country. Most probably think Brussels is a country.
As an American, I can tell you that 99% of Americans think Brussels is just shorthand for Brussels sprouts.
Happy to finally see Toulouse on the rise again and with a potentially sustainable financial model 💜🧡
Not technically a "fan" and also from Germany, but oh the hours on end I once spent as a teenager with Toulouse playing a football manager will always keep this club dear to my heart 😅
Ex gaffer on FM > Fan
I think its a creative approach to the game. Recently was thinking about how football should incorporate analytics a bit more into the sport. For sure going to keep up with these teams to see how they do with this approach. Great video!
Hey Z, definitely also look into Union SG. They have ben doing the same in Belgium, if not even better. They ended up first in the regular competition in their first year in the top division and are confirming this year again sitting second in the league and topping their group in the Europa league ahead of Union Berlin and Braga.
Loving this! Toulouse FC has become my ‘French Team’ since two seasons ago I took them from Ligue2 to winning the champions league in 5 seasons in FM. Mostly done by building on some great youth players.
I left them to go to Man Utd for 3 seasons before returning to Toulouse for another 5 seasons of multiple CL wins and Ligue1 domination, totally dethroning the mighty PSG. Since then, I watch Toulouse FC regularly and have been fascinated with how they run the club with what seems like a very modest budget. Only FM can do this to someone. Never even been to France but one day I will to go and watch Toulouse 😁.
💜💜
Really like the latest signings for Toulouse, such as Warren Kamanzi. He did a good job marking Messi in the match against PSG 5:37 An exciting prospect!
AC Milan has a similar approach where there's scouting department who go and scout players on the pitch and the data department that provide the numbers. AFAIK they don't directly interact to avoid bias, but Maldini, Massara and the chief scout Moncada have visibility to everything. In practice it means that if a player looks good based on data, they send actual scouts to check the player out and the other way around as well. Maldini & co also assess players personalities and family to try to avoid unprofessional players and troublemakers. Oh yeah - guess who owns AC Milan? RedBird Capital who also owns Toulouse.
Yeah I was really impressed when Milan managed to find a little known youth player named Zlatan. He mainly comes on as a sub right now but I see big things in his future
Redbird bought Milan recently tho, they own toulouse since 2020, but Milan since 2022
@@mikevismyelement AC Milan is still like the 2nd or 3rd youngest team in serie A despite zlatan and giruod. So jokes on you
Actually a huge chunk of clubs now use data but only few use efficiently. Chelsea actually has a brilliant model where they scout youth players take them to their academy and develop but they were idiots in not using those good players and leaving them out. This is where Arsenal smarted up now. They are using their academy players and have figured out a loan system where they can send them to develop. Arsenal tried data approach as well but it didn't succeed so they are now trying Chelsea method by poaching good academy prospects.
I'm from England, but one of my best friends is from France and he is a HUGE Toulouse fan and for years now he always talks to me about them, he knows alot about the club and i could see from what he was telling me that they are pretty much the Brentford of France and in 2021 i really wanted them to get promoted to Ligue 1 because i think they deserved it, but they missed out, they ended up getting promoted the season after though, i was telling him about how with the team that they have, that after they got promoted, they should be challenging for Midtable in 22/23, and sure enough they are! they basically ended up becoming my second team and i've always keeping up with their matches and watch their highlights since 2021, he always tells me Toulouse's biggest issue is with keeping their players as they tend to lose their good players, hopefully in the future they will continue with their moneyball philosophy and keep getting better and better and thus keep more of their stars. they lost Manu Kone to Munchen gladbach a while ago who he would also always tell me about how good he is, and now alot of top clubs want him.
The danish guy came from another team that uses moneyball. They were the starting point before Brentford given they’re owned by the same person
fc midtjylland?
@@lostheir7988 yep
As a Toulouse fan i gotta say that all the revolution since 2020 it's incredible. I hope it can continue, but the real questions now are contract renovations of players like Van Den Boomen and Spierings, that are atracting interest from bigger clubes that can offer much higher salaries. And recently MacFarlane left the clube and the latest information says that he will be with Man City for some time.
I really hope that all this revolution means that the club can continue to apply the Moneyball method to keep finding great players, even without MacFarlane.
Great video.
With a higher reputation & being established in Ligue 1 hopefully they can attract a higher caliber of undervalued players or youth prospects.
If I was a talented sporting director & wanted to actively pursue the moneyball method, Toulouse would be an extremely attractive option now that you know the club will actively support & enable that method of recruitment.
Redbird has connections to a lot of the right people in the recruitment business thanks to Zelus, they should be able to find a replacement for Brendan just fine.
They brought in Denis Genreau, an Australian from an average MacArthur team in the a-league, where he was focal for Toulouse in their promotion season.
The effect of moneyball in baseball is that everyone caught on and when the rich teams started using it the advantage was gone, with the one exception of the Tampa Bay Rays possibly. The very rich Red Sox adopted those methods second and immediately won the World Series. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Yeah the A’s are now trash and traded away all their players
Most teams use analytics at the Major League level at this point, and some of them pay the big bucks for it, which is why it can't really be described as moneyball anymore. What sets Tampa apart currently is their hyperfocus on platoon splits, minor league scouting, and prospect development. That way they can pay cheap veterans to basically combine into "one" higher value player, they can screw over other teams *cough*Pirates*cough* in trades, and they can make sure the prospects they trade for develop to keep the system churning.
I recently was wondering why Toulouse is doing so well with a lot of seemingly random signed players. Great video, thanks!
Billy Beane has been with AZ (the Netherlands) in an advisory role since 2015 and has been a minority shareholder since 2020. They're also interesting to look at.
Was about to comment this. I'm an AZ fan myself and the upward trajectory since the Moneyball principle is amazing
The Moneyball principle was never about "data / analytics" it is about finding a *different* way of doing things that generates value for either players or tactics. The appointment of a "personality expert" shows this exact point. Data / Analytics was just the method that the Oakland A's hit on to create value in a market full of undervalued players.
During the pandemic Arsenal rebuilt their entire recruiting department to be analytics based instead of traditional scouting. It's a big part of why they have one of the most well rounded squads in the premier league. They're easily able to shift from a high profile target that goes elsewhere and plugin a very similar player so quickly. They're the youngest squad in the premier league and look like they're be good for years to come.
Union Saint-Gillois, group winners in the Europa League also use moneyball with Brighton and have a lot more success than Toulouse.
Also worth mentioning that Brendan macfarlane has already left the club for england[this was known at time of release though I can understand the video was probably already made] French outlets say it’s Manchester city but we won’t know for sure until he starts up there or updates his linked in lol
Another example of teams buying from overlooked/lower divisions is that of Royale Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium.
They got promoted to the First division in 2021 and then finished as runners up in 2022.
01:50 i wasn't ready for that joke 🤣😂🤣😂 i was like wtf is he doing...
Brendan MacFarlane has been my go-to scout to sign for the last two FMs now
Andy Carroll was purchased because of data analytics, at the time he was involved in a high proportion of Newcastle's goals so statistically it made sense, Jordan Henderson was another such signing at the time. Clearly both the data analytics and stats collected were more unrefined back then, Henderson was criticised for sideways and backwards passing for years which inflate his pass success rates and it's more recent that progressive pass rates have actually become more important, and potentially why he's been coached into attempting that more.
Don’t forget the Stewart Downing Signing who had the most crosses attempted befor Liverpool signed him
Exactly that, it was the start of money ball but they where behind on how football was played at the time that's why his signing was a flop
Football is different. It's very traditional and those in the highest positions like to keep it that way. Clubs won't make the change to moneyball because it's not traditional, not to mention it's expensive to actually implement. No one is going to redo their whole model because Brentford did it or Toulouse did it, but if Bayern or Real Madrid did it and then rattled of a dynasty of trophies then you'd see a bunch of clubs rushing to do the same. I love moneyball and wish more clubs would implement it but football people are stuck in their ways.
@@Benito264 did you notice that these changes took place AFTER they were bought out? Which means they are no longer poor anymore? Trust me it's not cheap to implement this strategy.
Don't fully agree with your take. Money Ball pays for itself if you're avoiding players with the wrong personality/ poor stats on long expensive contracts
I disagree. There was a really interesting interview recently with Michael Lewis on the Freakonomics podcast. He speaks about Moneyball a little. Baseball (BB) lent itself to a "moneyball" strategy because of the nature of the game itself. It's a 1-v-1 event every pitch It's much easier (not easy, but easier) to use numbers to predict events based on the probability of their likelihood in baseball, than in flow sports like football, basketball, or soccer (to name but a few). You could find players in BB that gave you the same odds of an event happening at a fraction of the price of big name players. This was because the likelihoods can be calculated. Flow sports? Not so much.
Are analytics being used in all sports? Of course. Are they getting more sophisticated? Of course. Are clubs averse to using these strategies because of "tradition'? No. The models are simply not that good in a lot of sports. If the models worked, and they reliably brought wins for less cost, clubs would use it. Might they get there? Sure. But it will be a while given the nature of these types of sports. Objective analytics of a soccer player can certainly tell you something. But reliably predicting the number of wins a given player provides per $ is something else entirely.
A lot of clubs are applying these principles but they are not the top dogs and that's why they need that. Why would City for example try to go through hoops to get good players at low prices when they can get the best of the best?
"Fares chaibi" remember this name
He will be a big player
Atalanta has also been scouting the middle of the pack teams in the Netherlands.
But in the Netherlands they always look at what they can develope with the player in stead of what they can already be great at and make that a steady part of the player
god I love this channel
Zealand in that kit with the hair poking out the top makes me feel some kind of way
They make it hard To lose
Ba-dum-tss 🥁 😂
A-
Hey, Toulouse FC fan here !
Funny that you talk about us at this time because Brendan McFarlane just left the club
I am not that confident for the future, I hope Damien Comolli knows what he does
Toulouse's academy is very good too
A lot of solid Ligue 1 players came through their ranks... plus there's Etienne Capoue and Moussa Sissoko as well
Gabriel Suazinho, what a bargain for Toulouse
Maybe look at Feyenoord and Arne slot especially what we’ve been doing with 12 new players is absolutely crazy when you also look at all the players who left after the uecl final we have 3 players left from the players who started last year and leading in the eredivisie and in the Ro16 of the Europa league by knocking out Lazio
Curacao shirt?! Did not expect to see that on this channel. Love to see it!
Analytics is the past in American sports but it’s the future in world soccer. Those clubs that don’t employ an analytics based approach to player evaluation and management will become significantly less efficient than its competition.
Im a Marseille fan and i can tell you that Toulouse is definitely playing some good football. Let’s not forget the coach who implements everything to often coaches get criticised for the way the teams play. Montanier is doing a good job probably Toulouse will stay in ligue 1 and they can still win the French cup they are in semi final.
6:02 wasn't it Rodgers that wanted carrol as a panic buy to replace torres. Was same window we got suarez too.
That chest hair is legendary
won the ucl with toulouse in fm22, love the club
Don't forget that Brighton are another example of a "moneyball"-esque club - the owner is Tony Bloom, who is also a poker player and professional gambler - his company Starlizard heavily relies on data to identify profitable betting opportunities, and the club uses similar data streams to identify new players and staff...
That's the national shirt of Curacao, people from the island like me called it Korsou iam so proud at this point that a youtuber is wearing our national collors. Thx @Zeaand for making my day.
losc has been doing something similar as well
....I've hired Brendan Macfarlane as a scout on FM b4
Sick video! Would love to see more videos covering the money all effect in this
Love to see this as an Oakland A’s fan
To be fair to Commoli - the Andy Carroll purchase was actually sort of a moneyball signing, just at a club with a decent budget. They bought him and Stewart Downing because they thought that the most effective brand of football was wingplay with a big striker. Hence they bought a winger who crossed a tonne and quite well statistically and a striker who won a lot of headers statistically. It just turned out they weren't right about that being the style that would work for them and they abandoned it, which obviously made both look like poor signings.
Brendan MacFarlane is a great scout to sign in the FM games. Highly rated.
Really enjoying the none fm football stuff. Good work fella 👏
But do they get on base?
Thanks for covering us!
Billy Bean actually part owns a club in England (Barnsley)
Very good video dude. It all makes sense. I think simply the human biases (in all sorts of ways) play the biggest role in traditional scouting but this in some way is more effective. HOWEVER....I still believe the sport is too complicated and even somewhat based on lucky (or unlucky) moments, for real 'moneyball' scouting/transfer-strategy to really produce championship teams, let alone legacy squads that dominate for years.
Hey, nice cover of the Toulouse Story and its success that I hope will go on..
For information Brendan MacFarlane is sadly leaving the club for another one that has yet to be disclosed.
It's also very important to understand what caused the Oakland A's to switch to the money ball model. They lost arguably two of the best hitters in baseball Giambi and Damon to huge contracts they could never afford thus forcing them to replace those players with the small money they had.
Being of age and how to manage the sequence of returns in those early periods is what seems quite scary in the current market. The market is never a loser in a twenty year cycle, but the 2000s decade scenario scares me and could really disrupt my retirement. When you are no longer accumulating but withdrawing its hard to be anything but cautious.
Sounds like plan, how do you put money to work?
@Casino Şimşek Thanks for replying me, I've heard so many people talk about investment but none had said how to do it right.
Am hoping on you can explain more on how you make extra income from investments
Financial freedom is absolutely the perfect freedom
This is awesome
please can you be of an assistance to me, who is she.
there is so damn much to baseball that isnt even scratched by this. the game is totally equational
Question for anyone who can answer: would it be possible to implement some sort of "Moneyball" style of team building/managing at a US high school level? Not sure how that would work, but I'm looking for anything that can help turn my program around!
You'll need some kind of analytics, at least some knowledge of Python. Check out the modules like `mlpsoccer` and `kloppy`.
You'd also need some tracking devices that would gather the data. I don't think there is any free and open tool to generate event data from broadcast videos yet.
I love how perfectly u pronounced Said Hamulic hahah😂
That Liverpool squad should have been benchmark in terms of moneyball type team, but that failed project effectively in that format (especially for big clubs) made some much needed for some fine tuning in terms of moneyball team iterations..
My guy wearing the Korsou C.F. shirt, nice!!!!
Redbird capital recently bought ac Milan, I hope they can bring a little of this moneyball mentality in. I wonder what could happen with the team resources that are way bigger that Toulouse’s
in all the iterations of cm and fm Toulouse has given me sleepless nights
I'm born in Toulouse and this is super exciting
A question I have is what data and methods do they use to know if a player can make the step up to a higher league?
Toulouse also has a large capture market so they have a better chance of building a good youth recruitment and expanded fanbase. Van Den Boomen is actually being mentioned for a Netherlands call up. Will be interesting to see if Koeman puts him in the pre selection at least. On a side note he is originally from my club Heerenveen.
@@boomdibam9823 Both ;)
the fact that the big clubs are only spending more and more money yet the leagues seem to be getting closer and more balanced is basically all because of moneyball. without moneyball every top 5 league would be a one team league
Hearing you butcher the Dutch and Belgian names was great! Also, great video, would love to see more clubs take this approach rather than spending too many millions on players with one good season...
You mentioned Liverpool signing Andy Carroll.. Funnily enough this was an earlier football attempt at moneyball it was just done REALLY badly. That DOF basically decided that the underlying numbers he thought were important were succesful crosses and effectiveness from crosses. They then proceeded to sign Stuart Downing and Andy Carroll on that basis with the idea being they were just going to cross the ball in and score headers over and over again. So he has always been into data he just wasn't very good at it...
Surely the moneyball technique only works if no one else is using it?
If more and more clubs use this approach, then the whole thing falls down, a players value will then be dictated by their data/stats and so all of a sudden most valuable players will be the ones with the best data… and the clubs with the most money will be able to produce the most in depth data… etc etc
Thank you thank you for making this video. 🙏
the dutch pronunciation😭😭😭
hij doet z'n best, daar houden we 't op boys
Really hurts the soul. Godverdomme
That kit you are wearing is from which club?
The chances of my teacher starting this movie today to you posting this video about this movie💀
It's gonna be so fascinating when football figures out some version of WAR
They can try. They've got nothing Toulous
I really miss Rhys Healey at MK Dons! He's done great at Toulouse
Hi Z, great video! Not trying to critique your pronunciation of Dejaegere (because I know our dutch/belgian names don't make sense for english-speakers), but trying to help: it's pronounced something like duh-YAH-guhruh. Hope it helps!
I dunno about freedom dollars but it sounds like Toulouse could squeeze a freedom nickel til the buffalo farts.
Love your pronunciation of Dutch names
Throwing shade at that Director of football from Liverpool, if he signed Carroll he must have been there when they signed Suarez, if not for some biting that probably would have won them the league
Already one title change, I'm setting the over/under for future changes at 1.5, who wants action?
Friendly reminder RedBird also own AC Milan and parts of FSG.
To see another of my favourite sports be covered... you love to see it although thats the problem with moneyball it can only get you so far, as much as I'd love to be wrong theres too much money in the game to win the moneyball way
The Moneyball film is good but the book is brilliant. Toulose getting ballers while everyone else is “selling jeans or looking for Fabio.”
I mean ... Toulouse is hardly a small team in league 1.
They're a regular fixture in top flight football and sometimes close to the top.