Championship 29/07

 

With three summer leagues (MLS/ J-League 1/ Brazil Serie A) all in action for another four months or so, we are about to enter the busiest period of the year.

 

We also have the small matter of the 2022 World Cup, which starts on November 21st and is going to be unique in many ways.

 

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The last ten teams automatically promoted from Ligue 2 in the last five seasons have all survived at the higher level, with an average finishing position of 12.9, three finishing top 9. 

 

Toulouse and Ajaccio are the two to try their luck this season and I strongly favour Toulouse to thrive back in the top flight that they left in 2019/20, they were close to an immediate return in 20/21 when they finished third and "blew" a big promotion opportunity, but made no mistake last season and did so with 79 points, the third highest total amongst those ten promoted teams. Things often happen for a reason, even if we struggle to find or realise it at the time, and many teams return stronger from relegation and it is additionally possible that they will have blossomed with a second and successful Ligue 2 season, as it offered confirmation that the data revolution which the club were undertaking, was paying huge dividends and had them on the right track. 

 

The club was taken over by US private investment company RedBird Capital Partners in 2020, the fund own a share of Liverpool and will officially take charge of Milan in September , having agreed a €1.2 bn purchase of the Italian giants. One of their first "signings" at Toulouse was the appointment of Damien Comolli as President, he has previously held senior recruitment roles at Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool and positions at Monaco and St Etienne , but don't ask the latter for a reference, as he was bad mouthed all the way to Merseyside after leaving the club. Comolli has overseen a statistical data revolution, the like of which we have not really seen in French football before, some clubs do have a healthy reliance on data and actually a couple of them, Lens and Reims, were two of the clubs that came up from Ligue 2 and finished top half the following season, a respective 8th and 7th, just not to the degree that Touoluse have embraced statistics. They have scouted far and wide and in the last two seasons have signed players from Norway, Australia, Denmark, Japan, Slovakia, Belgian and USA amongst others, most from lower levels and they currently have a squad containing 15-16 different nationalities. It has been wildly successful ! 

 

 

“How much we spent? We invested €5.2 million over two seasons.”

“The data department? I think there are more than 40,000 players in our database for whom we are able to bring everything out. These are data specific to us. We buy the raw data and pass it through our algorithms to make it into statistics exclusive to the TFC (Toulouse). Our recruitment cell is led by the former director of recruitment at Brentford. Our data manager comes from Airbus. He was building flight simulators. Our strategy and culture manager is a woman with three MBAs and a bachelor’s degree in economics.”

On RedBird and the American culture in football:

“Our shareholder RedBird and I joined forces because we wanted to work like that. RedBird bought an analytical company, Zelus, which is very well known in the United States. There are also nine analysts who work there exclusively for the club.”

On the financial resources in the market:

“We will triple our potential investment in players. The payroll will double. We earn money but everything is reinvested in these positions with the infrastructure”, declared Damien Comolli.

Therefore, RedBird are not seeking to make profits by ‘trading’?

“There is no speculative mindset. We want to break away from this business model. Then there is also a reality. When we signed Branco Van den Boomen (26-year-old Dutch midfielder who came from the second division league: finished the season with 12 goals and 23 assists with the French club), we offered him Ligue 2 compensation and also anticipated the Ligue 1 rewards. Either the club follows his progress and that’s happening, or either the player overperforms and we can no longer keep up with him. We will do everything to keep him while being realistic.”

What is your goal in L1 (Ligue 1)? Damien Comolli said the following:

 

“To go as high as possible with a bold style of play. Our mathematical model takes more weight on the offensive than the defensive. We do not set limits in all modesty. What we did in L 2 is doable in L 1.”

 

I told you about Brendan MacFarlane who came from Brentford the day he signed for Toulouse, but he was NOT director of recruitment for the Bees, but a senior scout and he did help find Neal Maupay , Said Benrahma and Bryan Mbeumo ( £100m+ worth of talent) amongst others. He is DOR at Toulouse so maybe that is where the confusion came from. Obviously he, plus the other two appointments Comolli referenced are very Bees like additions, the well educated woman is Selinay Gurgenc who worked with the President at Fenerbahce and in addition to strategy, he described her role as one of a "truth teller" ..........

“I wanted this person to help me with all the strategic aspect we have at the club, from Academy to recruitment to management to who we appoint - anything you can think of.

“This person who is in charge of strategy has got all of the projects we have going on. Last year we were up to 62 projects; so who leads it, when do we meet, what time, what day, when do we meet again, how do we implement it?

“That person is also in charge of challenging me in everything I do and think - everything. I keep telling her, ‘You need to give me your opinion on everything we do and challenge me.’

This is all very innovative and should continue to give Toulouse an edge and like Brighton and Brentford who I spoke about recently being at least a couple of years ahead of everyone else in the EPL in terms of recruitment and markets they were looking at, Toulouse are at least that advanced over pretty much all of Ligue 1.

Comolli spoke to Training Ground Guru about his time at Tottenham and need for someone to tell him the "truth":

“We had Bale, Modric, Berbatov. Daniel (Levy) extended my contract for five years, he wanted to put in a release clause of £10m. My feet didn’t touch the ground and there was a period when I was totally tunnel vision, focusing only on signing players, so I was not looking at the culture, the playing style.

“So I was not looking at, ’Is he a culture fit, are people happy at the training ground, are the players happy, is the connection between the players and coaching staff right?’

“All this I totally blanked. It was just recruitment, recruitment, recruitment, and the kind of approach of saying, ‘Look, I know. So don’t tell me. I’ve proven it.’ I remember one specific signing where Steve Hitchen, who was a European scout for us at the time, went to see the player and said, ‘Damien don’t sign him.’

“And I remember very well in my head saying, ‘What is he talking about? Of course I’m going to sign this player.’ And the player was a failure. When I started to say, ‘I know better than all of you and I won’t listen,’ that was wrong.”

Much of that we have discussed in the past about Brentford and their own recruitment policy, I am sorry to keep referencing them, but they are the most innovative team in world football, have been for many years and when clubs operate along similar lines, with bright people at the helm and with the background staff and analytics/data department to back everything up, it has to noted. Toulouse have also learned to keep thing very close to their chest when dealing with potential targets and I have read that MacFarlane, who was always very open with the media and approachable , is now almost "unreachable".

The purpose of the data is to minimize errors in the transfer market, it will identify players who statistically fulfill at least 80% of the requirement (not 79%) and then Toulouse will focus on the personality and quality of the individual as a man, now read what I wrote almost two years ago ..............

Toulouse sold three players for €16m before the start of last season, but improved almost across the board, the aforementioned Van den Boomen, plus Rhys Healey, Mikkel Desler, Ado Onaiwu ,Rafael Ratão and Stijn Spierings (insane numbers in DM last season) are being monitored by bigger clubs and doubtless one or more will be sold at some stage. However, they have already signed two new additions for €4-5m from "left field" and most of the current squad , which is also very young ( as of today, second youngest in L1, the five youngest from last season finished 4-12-5-3-8) have indicated they wish to stay at Toulouse . 

How well can they do ? PSG are virtually guaranteed to win Ligue 1, but Toulouse are 1,000-1 and their chance is far greater than that of Leicester when they won the EPL and the difference is that the other top eight clubs were only separated by 10 points and there is no Big Six to beat. Also Strasbourg moved up from 15th in 20/21 to 6th last season and teams can improve quickly in this league and we started by looking at the record of those promoted teams and no reason why Toulouse cannot emulate the best of those, so we are talking about top 8. If you can find "best of the rest" and/or handicap markets, group betting nearer the start of the season ,it could/should be interesting and hopefully they can hit the ground running and we can land a couple of early season match bets at good odds. It is probably best to wait for the other markets and I will update these notes before the start of Ligue 1, but I have always loved a big price and we can start with our smallest bet of the year, but at the biggest odds!

0.25 units Toulouse to win Ligue 1 @ 1001.0 general quote.

The clubgowi newsletter:

Who reads it and how do they use it ?

Second season syndrome:

Is it a "thing" ?

Bundesliga BC and ITB stats:

We produce ITB and BC stats, often in table form for most of the major leagues, here is a late season Bundesliga sample.

Two teams were highlighted by those numbers, Stuttgart, who lost just one of their last five starts, including drawing 2-2 away to Bayern Munich, to survive and Hoffenheim, who's last four games, where we were expecting goals, produced 23 (4/7/6/6).

 

Good luck!