This is an updated version of an article first published in 2022
Nine months ago, Liverpool paid £60m for midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai from RB Leipzig, a key part of the succession plan to revitalize their aging midfield.
It reflects one of football’s curiosities: they offered less than seven times that sum in an attempt to replace the most important figure in the club’s recent history.
Today (Wednesday), Athleticism reported that Liverpool have started negotiations with Feyenoord for manager Arne Slot to succeed Jurgen Klopp. The 2022-23 Eredivisie champions rebuffed an opening bid of €9 million (£7.7 million, $9.6 million).
It remains to be seen what the final figure will be if Liverpool get their man, but the disparity is not unique to this deal.
In 2022, Chelsea paid Brighton & Hove Albion £55 million ($63.6 million) for their left-back Marc Cucurella. The following month they paid the same club less than half (£22 million) for their manager Graham Potter, the man charged with leading a brilliant new era at Stamford Bridge under the Todd Boehly-Clearlake consortium.
Just months before, Aston Villa paid £26million for Sevilla’s Brazilian defender Diego Carlos. Villa returned to La Liga soon after to make a more significant capture: hiring manager Unai Emery from Villarreal. This time they paid the Spanish club £5.2 million in compensation.
The amount Chelsea paid for Potter exceeded the £17.2 million Bayern Munich paid RB Leipzig for Julian Nagelsmann when he became their head coach in 2021.
All three managers had solid reputations and detailed CVs, And led big jobs – so why were they so much cheaper to get than most elite players? Why do clubs take and lose managers for much lower fees than the 25 or so footballers they are responsible for leading and improving?
Athleticism asked the experts what all this says about value for managers and players.
Although a head coach can have far more influence than a single player, it might be too simplistic to conflate the two.
Sasha Ryazantsev is the former finance and commercial director of Everton. He also served on the Goodison board until 2021 and although he believes the manager is the most important person at a club, he believes there is a “fundamental difference” between their value and that of a player.
First there is the question of reciprocity. “Clubs would love to have a release clause for a manager,” he says, “but any manager, or his agent, worth his salt would demand a reciprocal fee to be paid to him if he was made redundant.
“As it is much more likely that the club will fire the manager rather than do it themselves, clubs prefer to keep any release clause as low as possible. Sometimes the fee can be clearly stipulated in the contract and sometimes it must be Negotiated If the release clause is subject to negotiation, then a good place to start would be the manager’s termination clause.
“In cases where this is unclear, it may be the remaining value of the contract, which can be quite expensive if the manager has just signed a new one.”
There is another fundamental difference between players and managers when it comes to UEFA registration fees. Clubs can only field players registered with them by European football’s governing body, while manager registration rights do not exist.
This means that, unlike managers, players cannot be fired before the end of their contract, nor can they leave one because they would not be able to play for another club without registration.
These registration fees are what the transfer fees actually pay for.
Then there is the question of differences in resale value. “For the buying club, it is difficult to justify paying a significant ‘transfer fee’ for a manager,” explains Riazantsev. “If a player turns out to be a flop, he can often be sold for at least a residual value.
“With the manager, the fee you pay will probably never be repaid by another club, because again you are more likely to sack the manager than let him be poached by another club in the future.”
The traditional structure of buying and selling players, via transfer windows, is another key issue affecting different values.
“With players, the selling club generally has quite a bit of time to put them on display and prepare an agreement for the transfer window,” adds Ryazantsev. “Then they can try to pit two or more buying clubs against each other in a “competitive auction.”
“With managers, that doesn’t exist. Once he wants to leave and receives an offer from a buying club, it is often at the height of the season and the club would rather take money quickly than have a manager on their hands who does not fully concentrate on his work.
Ryazantsev also points to some advantages in manager versus player value for clubs trying to replace well-paid, underperforming stars.
“The transfer value of players decreases over time and tends towards zero – it can even be below zero for those on high salaries, still under contract and unwanted by current clubs – think of all those loan deals when the old club continues to pay part of the player’s salary. This is essentially a negative “transfer fee”.
“On the contrary, the value of the manager can increase or decrease and does not depend on his age.”
When it comes to crunch time, some clubs may refuse to entertain a player’s interest in leaving until, and if, it suits them. They are ordered to put their heads down and concentrate on training and playing.
But when a manager publicly admits his interest in going elsewhere, that’s different.
“At this stage, trust can be broken,” says Tim Keech, co-founder of MRKT Insights, which provides football advice to professional clubs in England and beyond.
“It’s much more difficult for clubs to say no when the coach has said: ‘I want to speak to this club’. From owner to sporting director to manager, they often have a very intense relationship. The bond of trust is impacted.
“Even then, if the club taking on their manager quibbles over a compensation claim, it usually comes down to negotiation.
“But with a player, it’s different. Let’s say a club asks £50 million for someone. Maybe they think it would cost them £30m to replace the player, and then there’s a £20m bonus on top of that for losing that player.
Not all transfers happen and Keech believes the damage caused by an unstable manager can be worse than that caused by a lonely, unhappy player.
“The average length of stay of a manager in a club is 15 months,” he specifies. “To demand higher fees for their managers, clubs would have to give them longer contracts, which would mean more risk for what would still not reach the money you would get for a top player.”
Salaries of today’s managers don’t lag behind those of players, although few earn much more. Keech says that in the Premier League, managers tend to have a salary equivalent to that of the highest-paid player in the team.
“Managers earn a good living,” he adds. “Maybe not as high as that of senior managers in other sectors. The Google manager typically earns significantly more than most employees, but managers have that extra flexibility when bigger clubs come calling.
“In football, it’s generally accepted that you shouldn’t really stand in the way of opportunities.”
Although reluctant to lose Potter, Brighton ultimately accepted his departure – in a sense it is part of the football food chain – while expecting high compensation.
Individual sponsorship deals for players can also add value to clubs, but this level of visibility is rare among managers.
“Barcelona lost €70m in a sponsorship deal when Lionel Messi left,” says Dr Matthew Hindmarsh, senior lecturer in sports media affairs at Liverpool John Moores University.
“The best players have their own brands and when they are at a club it can attract more attention and more offers for their clubs. So when they have to sell them, they charge higher fees to compensate.
“Players are also a rarer commodity because they have a short career compared to a manager. A player can be in his prime for five years while a manager can be in his prime for 20 years.
“Then there is the transfer window, which often influences how much clubs pay for players as a knee-jerk reaction. There is no window for managers.
This may seem like a curiously large discrepancy between player transfer fees and managerial remuneration, but the absence of managers complaining about it perhaps underlines a status quo that suits everyone.
(Top photo: NESimages/Geert van Erven/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)