Luxembourg-registered company, Gol Football Luxembourg SARL, for €2.5 million. They did something similar with the much-coveted Portuguese international João Moutinho. When Rodríguez scored a hat-trick in the 2012 Portuguese Cup final, Porto bought the original 30 per cent of the player they did not own from Convergence Capital Partners B.V. for €2,250,000. That meant they now controlled more than half his economic rights. He signed a new five year contract, with a €45 million release clause. Nice work, if you can get it. The scorpion dance was completed in January 2013, when Gol Football Luxembourg SARL sold their 35 per cent stake back to Porto for €8.5 million, a profit of €6 million. With such sums at stake it is unsurprising that Porto, like Udinese in Serie A and Villareal in La Liga, are pioneering video scouting.
Smith reflected: ‘We’re running into another era where the ability to stream games is incredible. You could come in here on any given Monday and have every game from, say, the French league ready to watch – bang, bang, bang. Maybe for a Premier League club, video scouting might be the next step. So instead of sending somebody out there, certainly in the initial phase, you just compile all the reports back here. Then, further down the line, someone goes out and follows up. You would never want to get away from first-hand insight but I would argue that you can get enough from video to make it worthwhile. Think of football in terms of being a normal business. You deal in footballers as a commodity, just like you would buy and sell anything else. You’d be more conscious of how you spent your money. You wouldn’t have people travelling all over Europe, all over the world, speculatively looking at things, would you?’
He sees Borussia Dortmund as a more realistic role model: ‘They nearly went bust about five or six years ago because they overstretched. They’ve rebuilt with a team full of young players, all with good resale values. They recruited really cleverly, from Poland, Japan, South America, and won the Bundesliga. The next step involved the Champions League, which gave them the money to invest in slightly more expensive players. It’s like a virtuous circle as long as you can keep it going. It’s a great example of how to run a football club. They also produce top, top players from their academy. That leads to self-sufficiency. You have to accept that every year you might have to sell one, and that will fund a process of evolution. So you sell a player for fifteen and you buy three for five million each. The hope is one of those will be sold for fifteen in a year or two, and so it goes on. Everton can operate a bit like that in the Premier League because it is acknowledged and accepted that we haven’t got much money.
‘The world is changing. In the old days, it seemed as if they did everything off the back of a fag packet. The old school scout would go to a game, and just have a general look, unless there was a specific player. He’d then speak to the chief scout on the phone and tell him what he thought, so basically everything was stored in people’s heads. Well, they thought it was. It wasn’t really, because you can’t store it all in your head, can you? That’s why reports have become so fundamental. It’s about intellectual property rights. That information belongs to Everton, because it was gained by people being paid by Everton, working for Everton. The old school way, with the chief scout having it all in his head, gave no continuity. If he gets run over by a bus, he takes all the knowledge with him. I know I’m laughing at that thought, but we had a similar problem in the academy, several years ago. The head of recruitment left and there was nothing . We didn’t even have the telephone numbers of the scouts! It was as if he’d never been here. An owner, or a CEO these days wouldn’t tolerate that, if he’s got anything about him.’
Some things never
Smith reflected: ‘We’re running into another era where the ability to stream games is incredible. You could come in here on any given Monday and have every game from, say, the French league ready to watch – bang, bang, bang. Maybe for a Premier League club, video scouting might be the next step. So instead of sending somebody out there, certainly in the initial phase, you just compile all the reports back here. Then, further down the line, someone goes out and follows up. You would never want to get away from first-hand insight but I would argue that you can get enough from video to make it worthwhile. Think of football in terms of being a normal business. You deal in footballers as a commodity, just like you would buy and sell anything else. You’d be more conscious of how you spent your money. You wouldn’t have people travelling all over Europe, all over the world, speculatively looking at things, would you?’
He sees Borussia Dortmund as a more realistic role model: ‘They nearly went bust about five or six years ago because they overstretched. They’ve rebuilt with a team full of young players, all with good resale values. They recruited really cleverly, from Poland, Japan, South America, and won the Bundesliga. The next step involved the Champions League, which gave them the money to invest in slightly more expensive players. It’s like a virtuous circle as long as you can keep it going. It’s a great example of how to run a football club. They also produce top, top players from their academy. That leads to self-sufficiency. You have to accept that every year you might have to sell one, and that will fund a process of evolution. So you sell a player for fifteen and you buy three for five million each. The hope is one of those will be sold for fifteen in a year or two, and so it goes on. Everton can operate a bit like that in the Premier League because it is acknowledged and accepted that we haven’t got much money.
‘The world is changing. In the old days, it seemed as if they did everything off the back of a fag packet. The old school scout would go to a game, and just have a general look, unless there was a specific player. He’d then speak to the chief scout on the phone and tell him what he thought, so basically everything was stored in people’s heads. Well, they thought it was. It wasn’t really, because you can’t store it all in your head, can you? That’s why reports have become so fundamental. It’s about intellectual property rights. That information belongs to Everton, because it was gained by people being paid by Everton, working for Everton. The old school way, with the chief scout having it all in his head, gave no continuity. If he gets run over by a bus, he takes all the knowledge with him. I know I’m laughing at that thought, but we had a similar problem in the academy, several years ago. The head of recruitment left and there was nothing . We didn’t even have the telephone numbers of the scouts! It was as if he’d never been here. An owner, or a CEO these days wouldn’t tolerate that, if he’s got anything about him.’
Some things never
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