How would you describe Darwin Nunez career so far? Or Tchouameni’s ?
Personally I think their both those deals are over pays … however football at the top end is such a small market (number of clubs) that after a few deals a new fee level is normalized
I don’t think either deal was overpaid. It’s just the value that both buying club and selling club were happy to agree, so by that definition each fee is market value. (As you’ve pointed out, it’s a small specialised market, not like the housing market where an estate agent sets a value that can be easily compared with similar houses.)
Also, looking at transfer fees alone ignores other factors such as salary (current and potential), contract length (current club too), age of player, how urgent the buying club needs him, how urgent the selling club needs the money, how much the player wants to leave, etc, so it’s hard to attribute a generalised market value to footballers. The market values on transfermkt are too generalised.
Haaland is being touted as a bargain, but his whole package including commissions, salary and the fact he has a release clause, takes his “cost” to at least double Nunez. Will he produce twice as much on the pitch?
If Haaland was on the same wages as Nunez, City would have probably had to pay a lot more for his transfer fee, as many other clubs would have been interested, so there could have been a bidding war.
Same as with Nunez. If he said he was open to United too, then we would have had to match their bid. In other words, we paid less potentially because he only wanted to move to LFC.
