Last year, Brazilian footballer Neymar has become the most expensive football player in the history of the sport. French side Paris Saint Germain paid the highest football transfer fee ever for the Brazilian forward to the Catalan football club Barcelona, €222 million, back in 2017.

Transfer fees have come a long way from the first recorded one, a £100 fee paid by Aston Villa to West Bromwich Albion in 1893. We never stopped seeing record-breaking transfer fees being paid by teams for players they perceived as being of high value for their teams. But this raises a question: on what base did these teams evaluate the player, deciding whether it’s worth it for them or not to pay these fabulous amounts for their transfer?

Supply and demand

Phil Smith, a football agent that has represented players like Harry Kane and Gianfranco Zola, told The Guardian that it’s all a question of supply and demand, much like in the case of other businesses.

“It is a question of supply and demand, with the agents having little overall influence. The greater the competition, the higher the price.” It’s obvious that a player that has sparked the interest of several high-profile teams with bigger financial capabilities will be “sold” (transferred) at a premium. And the job of the agents is, among others, to spark the interest of the clubs in the players they represent, continuously trying to obtain a better deal for them.

A need to be fulfilled

In the same article, football intelligence analyst Omar Chaudhuri revealed that evaluating a player is a complicated process. First, the team needs to identify the exact type of player they need to fill a position in the field. Then, they start looking for players that would be fit for their needs and try to identify individual players that are ideal.

Player age also plays an important role in the evaluation. Football players are considered to be in their prime in their mid-20s, ideally around the age of 25. After this age, the perceived value of a player starts to decrease.

Then, statistics and records are combined with the insights of team managers and coaches, along with the exact situation of the club that sells and buys. John Stones, for example, was valuable to Chelsea in 2015 because he was the perfect fit for the profile the club needed but less valuable for other clubs because they had more similar players graduating their own youth academy.

At the same time, Rio Ferdinand was let go from Leeds United for just £29.1 million in 2002 due to the club’s precarious financial situation, joining Manchester United and proving himself as one of the best English football players later on.