Measures for a Better Youth Development Environment in European Professional Football

Abstract

Both UEFA and the EU institutions favour the local training of young sports players, to guarantee a healthy development of European sports and their players. Recent empirical research supports the idea that professional football players need initial experience in a domestic first team to realise successful careers, a requirement that is threatened by increasing international youth player mobility. Existing measures are scarce, mainly focus on a legal perspective and do not realise the envisaged objectives. This study has the objective to develop new measures to more easily retain young talents in their European domestic league, without limiting the free movement of professional players. This paper’s main contribution is the proposition of flexible, quantitative measures, based on microeconomic models, to (1) create a level playing field for player wages to increase the domestic league’s attractiveness for domestic players, (2) curtail player loans and (3) better reward clubs’ youth training efforts, while at the same time discouraging adverse international youth transfers. The impact on the overall competitive balance between leagues is assessed as well.

LAY SUMMARY

Existing measures to realise UEFA’s and the EU’s objective of limiting international youth transfers have been demonstrated to be insufficient. In this paper, economic measures are developed, in order to retain youth players sufficiently long, while safeguarding professional player mobility and the international competitive balance, to guarantee the further development of talents and the sport.

Keywords:

• Football management
• sports development
• international youth player mobility
• economic measures
• competitive balance

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Stefan Kesenne, Trevor Heaver and Marcia De Wolf for their suggestions to improve previous versions of this paper. We are also very grateful to the participants of the RBFA Knowledge Centre-UAntwerpen FBE youth football seminar on 31 May 2018 for their input. All remaining errors are ours.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest has to be reported.

Notes

1 To deal with such situations, governing bodies could moreover allow clubs to contract an additional player in case of a long-term injury among the current team members.

2 Foreign is to be seen from the viewpoint of the acquiring club.

3 As stated, clubs spend their entire budget on acquiring talent under win maximisation. Hence, a player might be acquired if sufficient budget is available to cover the costs that exceed financial benefits, and proportional sporting benefits are expected.

4 For instance, less than 25 games played (including substitutions after starting from the bench) in combination with less than 900 playing minutes could be considered reasonable benchmarks. This approximately corresponds with one season of professional first-team experience and also accounts for actual playing opportunities. Future empirical research should elaborate on how these thresholds impact the final outcome of the proposed measure (e.g. by using an agent-based simulation).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tom Vermeire

Tom Vermeire (MSc, University of Antwerp) is a researcher at the University of Antwerp. He obtained the Dean’s Award for the Best Master Student in 2018 in Business Engineering. His Master’s Thesis was awarded the Pierre Wildiers Award 2019 in the domain of Business Engineering / Business Engineering in Management Information Systems, issued by the University of Antwerp. His research interests include sports economics, marketing and management and his work has appeared in various journals.

Matteo Balliauw

Matteo Balliauw (PhD, University of Antwerp) is a researcher at the University of Antwerp. He obtained the Dean’s Award for the Best Master Student in 2014 in Business Engineering. His Master’s Thesis was awarded the ORBEL Thesis Award 2014, issued by Operations Research Belgium. His research interests include sports economics, marketing and management and his work has appeared in various journals.

Thomas Verlinden

Thomas Verlinden (MSc, University of Antwerp) is a researcher at the University of Antwerp. His research interests include sports economics, marketing and management and his work has appeared in various journals.