Uruguay

  The small nation of 3.5 million inhabitants continues to punch above its weight. Amazingly, the two-time World Cup Champions (1930, 1950) have won the Copa America a record-tying 14 times (most recently when the Enzo Francescoli-inspired team won on home soil in 1995). Their past two major tournaments have continued to impress (a 4th place finish in both Copa America 2007 and World Cup 2010) and the squad that achieved those successes will lead them into this latest tournament.

  Their manager, Oscar Tabarez, has been their established manager since 2006, giving the nation stability at the helm. Uruguay will feature two of the world’s deadliest strikers in Luis Suarez and Diego Forlan who have been experiencing the ups and downs of European football over the last calendar year. Forlan struggled this year with Athletico Madrid, but is a player that usually puts on very strong appearances for his national side. Suarez hit the English Premier League like a comet and will be looked upon as a possible top scorer for the tournament.

   The defense will once again be captained by arguably the finest defender Uruguay has produced since the days of Montero in Diego Lugano. Fernando Muslera of Lazio has taken over the position of goalkeeper from Fabian Carini and with several experienced defenders in front of him, Uruguay will be hard to beat and will look to at least make the semi-finals this year in neighboring Argentina; expect a strong contingent of Uruguayans to make the trip across the River Plate.

   Chile

   Much has happened to the Chilean national team since World Cup 2010. That team, led by the eccentric yet brilliant Marcelo Bielsa, finished second in their group behind Spain before being eventually knocked out by Brazil, 3-0 in the round of 16. Since then, Bielsa has resigned amid controversy and the national team are struggling to fit their new system on the eve of the Copa America.

   National team manager Claudio Borghi will find himself in familiar environs as he is Argentinian born and the former manager of club sides Independiente and Boca Juniors. Despite Bielsa’s departure, Chile remain a fascinating team full of players who love to get forward at breakneck pace. Chief tormentor is Udinese’s Alexi Sanchez who has been at the heart of many transfer rumors this summer. The quicksilver winger has the capability of playing on either wing and can often prove a handful for any defender. His counterpart, Matias Fernandez (“Mati-gol”) is equally adept. They will surely be called upon to set up chances for the likes of Humberto Suazo and Jean Beausejour. Recent controversy notwithstanding, look for Chile to be amongst the top goal-scoring nations in Argentina.

  Mexico

  Another Copa America invitee (besides Costa Rica), Mexico has historically been one of the more successful nations in recent years. Unfortunately for them this year will feature a squad that is weakened by the fact the nation is also competing in the CONCACAF Gold Cup in the United States.

  El Tri will enter this installment of the Copa America will their most-capped player being Giovanni dos Santos (42 caps) followed by many players with less than 10 appearances for their national side; the side amounts to what would be considered an Olympic team with the majority of the players being under 23 years of age. Mexico’s preliminary squad, featuring 6 players from Chivas de Guadalajara, also will feature the familiar faces of EPL striker Carlos Vela and veteran defender Johnny Magallon. Despite this being essentially Mexico’s “B” squad, the nation still has plenty of talent and could spring a surprise at this year’s Copa.

  Peru

  The Andean nation of Peru has had solid success at the Copa America. Winners of the tournament twice (in 1939 and 1975), La Rojiblanco, have reached the quarterfinals five consecutive times. Although they were dismantled 4-1 by Argentina in 2007, they remain a nation with star quality, especially in attack.

   Their much-traveled yet experienced manager Sergio Markarian will be given the assignment of making Peru not only a strong candidate for another Copa America quarterfinal appearance but also the upcoming World Cup qualifying cycle. Led by captain and lead striker Claudio Pizarro, Peru also have several players who have cut their teeth in Europe’s strongest leagues like Jefferson Farfan (Schalke 04) and Pablo Guerrero (Hamburg SV). With some experienced players in the back (defender Walter Vilchez and goalkeeper Leao Butron), Peru will surely hope to compete for a second-place finish, even top spot should favorites Uruguay stumble out of the gate.

“We thought they
had reached the very depths, but we were wrong … Swept away by
Bafana, Bafana, the Blues didn’t even have the spurt of
pride hoped for.”  “Quick. Go away.”  – Le France
Soir

“To have the worst soccer team at the World Cup was
almost unbearable. To also have the most stupid is intolerable.” 
- Le Parisien

“We were promised a lot of
things prior to
the tournament. We were promised a thing that will work together. We
were promised a new tactical system. In the end, we only got bad
things. We were promised a lot but we got nothing… we’re just glad
its over.” – FRANCE

That, in a nutshell, summarizes
the
overall sentiment towards the farce that was the French national team.  Les
Blues crashed out the World Cup at the hands of the host
nation, South Africa.  It serves little purpose reliving the
shambles that occurred in South Africa, but it should be pointed out
that whilst one culprit is gone, others — just as responsible for the
failings of the team – have arguably escaped unscathed from their
actions.

While Domenech  deserves a massive mention in
the blame game, the players (some more than others) should not be
left unmentioned.  Most of the players did their very best work off
the pitch and should all be ashamed of their on-field
performances.  Along with the players, the head and entire body of the French
Football Federation, starting with the recently departed Jean-Pierre
Escalettes, deserve a special ink in the black book.

The bullies, Evra,
Anelka and Ribery, more than anyone else,
hurt the French national team.  Reports from credible sources attest
that the trio had a personal vendetta against Gourcuff, ostracizing
him from group activities, including team meals and such.

“When you are captain of the France team, you must have a
responsibility to the jersey and the people.  When the players
shut themselves in the bus, and the fact that it was the coach who
read the statement, that showed that the coach was no longer
respected.  In any group there are leaders and people who
follow, and others who do not agree and do not dare say no.”  -
French legend Lilian Thuram.

Evra’s attitude as captain and
leader of Les Blues was deplorable to say the least.  His overall
demeanor during the entire tournament was classless and cannot be
defended on any account.   Furthermore, his bust-up with fitness
coach Robert Duverne, and subsequent sly acting during the press
conference in an attempt to embarrass Domenech, shows his true
cancerous character.

Banning Evra, as suggested by Thuram, will only enhance his role of victim
of Domenech.  However, simply dropping him from further call ups might be
the best solution.

Ribery and Anelka ganging up on
arguably the best player for Les Blues in the past two years is
immature and shocking.  Ribery, an unknown entity before the 2006
World Cup continues to live up to his billing as class clown and
egotistical git.  His actions in South Africa mirror his less-than-harmonious departure from former club Marseille, where he
orchestrated a war of words between him and former L’OM club
president Pape Diouf.

Anelka has played for eight clubs in his 13-year career as a professional footballer.  His penchant as a cancerous sulk in several dressing rooms over the years has resulted
in an aggregate transfer cost of just under £90 million. 
His sheer lack of disrespect for authority figures cements his place
as the country’s most wasteful talent for the better half of a
century.

 The actions of these senior players, more than
anything else, killed the morale of the team.

Hopefully the
national team careers of the ring leaders —
Evra, selfish Ribery, and the self loathing sulk Anelka — will be
a thing of the past.  Les Blues finally have a leader off the pitch in
Laurent Blanc, but desperately need one on the pitch.

Once
again, like in Euro 2008, Jeremy Toulalan emerged as the only shining
light on the French team.  He came to the aid of Gourcuff during his
nightmare with the team bullies, and is generally considered the lone
voice of reason on the French team.  Despite his very coy nature and
his unwillingness to steal the spotlight for club or country, when he
speaks up (which is very rare) he usually says very intelligent and interesting
things — a trait missing from the supposed leaders of Les Blues.

Toulalan is the public’s favorite to don the captain’s armband
as the Blanc tenure begins — a much welcomed change from the horrors
of the past four years.

The freindly against Norway at the Stade
de France on August 10 will undoubtedly be the beginning of a new
era of French football.  Let the suspense begin.

But unfortunately this game was not a game of beautiful football, but a
game full of kicks, fouls, and dirty play.  Early on Howard Webb
refused to act on a cleat to Alonso’s chest by Nigel De Jong and from
there on it became a free for all.  Spain still tried to play their
game, but it was near impossible because the Dutch decided to play the
game of destroyer and stopping plays. I guess the Dutch realized that
they could not compete with Spain playing an attacking game, as they
did against Brasil, so their coach changed to more physical, thuggish
tactics.  I was personally disappointed that the Dutch regressed to the
old game plan that we saw at World Cup 2006 (remember the game against
Portugal?) 

Both teams had their chances.  Ramos had two clear opportunities to
score on a set piece.  Villa nearly scored twice.  Robben had two one
on one chances against Casillas, which the Spaniard saved
brilliantly.   Two of the substitutions made by Del Bosque were key for
Spain, the entrance of Jesus Navas and Cesc Fabregas, for Pedro and Alonso.  Navas,
with his speed on the wings, opened the game up.  Cesc created more
space for Xavi and Iniesta to play and link up.

The game went into extra time and it sure looked like there would be a
sending off.  Heitinga, who had a very poor game, brought down Iniesta
to impede him from penetrating the penalty area.  He was sent off with a
second yellow and Holland was down to ten men.  Spain continued to
attack the Dutch goal and the break through came in the 116th minute
(the latest world cup winner, another record!) by Andres Iniesta. 
Iniesta, the silent assasin, who has this knack to come up big in the
games that really matter (memories of Stamford bridge).  Iniesta
capitalized on a sweet pass from Cesc and did not fail.

Spain had an extremely tough tournament.  They played teams who parked
the bus, double and tripled teamed Xavi and Iniesta, and played the
destroyer game.  But they came out victorious, because they never
relented and stayed true to their game.  They attacked and defended in
packs and wore down their opposition, while patiently awaiting an
opening.  No wonder Jogi Low admitted that he was rebuilding Germany in
the Spanish style of play. 

And what of the future? Well for Puyol, Xavi, Villa, Capdevila, and
Marchena, this is probably their last World Cup.  Could they possibly
return for the next Euros? Maybe, maybe not.  Still the future looks
bright as Spain continues to develop their youth in the respective
academies/reserve teams, while the youth national teams continue to
compete well in the UEFA and FIFA tournaments.  But hey, let’s just
enjoy the moment as Champions of the World!

HOLLAND: Stekelenburg, Mathijsen, Heitinga, Van Bronckhorst (Braafheid, m.105), Van der Wiel, De Jong (Van der Vaart, m.99), Van Bommel, Sneijder, Kuyt (Elia, m.71), Robben, Van Persie

SPAIN:  Casillas, Ramos, Puyol, Piqué, Capdevila, Alonso (Cesc, m.87), Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta, Pedro (Navas, m.60), Villa (Fernando Torres, m.105)

Goles: 0-1, M.116: Iniesta, Cesc assist

Referee: Howard Webb (ENG). Expulsed from the game with 2nd yellow
Heitinga (m.109). Yellow Cards: Van Persie (m.15), Puyol (m.17), Van
Bommel (m.22), Sergio Ramos (m.23), De Jong (m.28), Van Bronckhorst
(m.54), Capdevila (m.67), Robben (m.84), Van der Wiel (m.111),
Mathijsen (m.117) y Xavi (m.21).

Transfers have existed in the realm of English football since the late nineteenth century.  Since that time the fees being agreed by the clubs has risen at a rapid pace.  Middlesborough agreed to sell Alf Common to Sunderland for £1,000 in 1905.  By 1928, the record fee for English football was £11,000.  The first English transfer to break the one million pound mark occurred in 1979.  And the current world record is the transfer of Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United to Real Madrid for £80 million.   The acceleration of transfer spending can be seen in the following graph that shows the increase in the world transfer record since Common’s transfer:

source: FIFA.com

?A few individuals are able to enjoy tremendous salaries in their respective professions.  This has been called the “superstar” phenomenon in economic literature.  The marginal revenue product for athletes can be summed up by the additional price that a fan is willing to pay to see him play multiplied by the number of fans.  Whether the fans are live, in the stadium, or via television is irrelevant, as we are just looking at the additional revenue generated from increased prices and the increase in fans due to the single player.  This impact is known as the superstar effect.  ?

?The marginal cost of reaching additional fans is very expensive if we look at the simple “fans in the stands” theory.  The cost of expanding a stadium, or trying to expand into a new market, is quite expensive.  However, for clubs like Real Madrid, which has one of the largest global fan bases, the marginal cost of extending the broadcast to a new fan is minimal.  This idea shows that a club like Real Madrid is able to maximize its return on investment from a purchase like Cristiano Ronaldo because it already has the infrastructure to exploit all revenue streams and maximize their profit.?

?Literature covering football economics has identified two measures that prove to be correlated to high wages — goals per game and assists.  Studies have shown high levels of fan interest in players who have high strike rates (goals per game) and assist rates.  The data indicates that a goal rate of one goal in every two games is regarded as a highly successful player. 

To give an example that everyone knows, we can see that Cristiano Ronaldo has maintained a goal rate (goals + assists per game) of less than two for the past three years. 

A forward who scores more than 0.40 goals per game is identified to be exceptional, and is a good indicator of a superstar.  Since 2006 Cristiano Ronaldo has a goal rate of .615. Clearly, this indicates that he would not only be a superstar, but another level of superstar.  This would suggest his status as one of the top three players in the world, with a goal rate higher than other superstars, justifies his world record fee.
?
?Now to look at what makes up a transfer fee.  For people who don’t like equations, this may be painful.
?
?Gerrard and Dobson in “Testing for Monopoly Rents” expressed the following string of equations that make up a theoretical model for transfer fees, first developed by Vrooman in 1997, that shows the objective of the football club: ?
?maxU = U(Q,?)?

?Essentially this equation breaks down to assuming there are two aspects: team performance and club profits.  Q represents team performance, and club profits are shown as ?.   To determine team performance you must evaluate team talent, q, and the coach ability, ?.  The equation can be used:?
?Q=Q(q,?)
?
?To get the other part of the equation, we must find the club profit, or ?.  This is simply a matter of revenue minus costs, shown as:?
?? = R-C ?

?To determine the revenue, R, for the club we must look the average price of a ticket, ?, gate attendance, G, other football, F, and non-football revenue, N.  Assuming that the quality of the team performance will positively correlate to revenue from all sources, the following function applies:?
?R = ?G(?,Q) + F(Q) + N?

?To find the total costs for the club we simply need to look at the total player costs, W, and the non-player costs, O.  This can be shown as:?
?C = W(q) + O?

?This all comes together to optimize as MRP – Wq = MRS.  Where MRP is the marginal revenue product, W(q) is the marginal costs, and MRS is the marginal rate of substitution. Under profit maximization MRP = W(q). ?

?When applying this theoretical framework towards the transfer system, and in particular Cristiano Ronaldo’s transfer, we must evaluate the transaction as a transfer of property rights.  We must evaluate the value of the property right to the selling club, Ts, and the marginal value of his playing talent, Wqs, and his actual salary, ?s.  This is shown as:?

Seller: Ts = Wqs – ?s
?Buyer: Tb = Wqb – ?b?

?Ts can be seen as the reservation price for the selling club and Tb can be viewed as the maximum price they would be willing to spend to acquire the talent.  The assumption would be that the actual transfer price would fall within the upper and lower control limits, but the buyer or seller may be able to exploit the other based on a need to sell or the buyer’s ability to pay.    This can be seen in the last transfer market by the exaggerated fees that Manchester City were required to pay for almost all of the players they acquired because it is commonly known that they have the richest owner of any football club.?

?Using the theoretical framework provided by looking at monopoly rents, and adding in superstar effects for the appropriate players, we are able to establish some methods for quantitatively looking at transfers, past and future.  By taking this data and combining it with game theory techniques, all clubs should be able to evaluate potential transfers and accurately price a transfer fee.  This should also serve to show that even though the prices seem to be astronomical, there is a reason for it.  Clubs make enough money off of superstars to easily make up the price paid.  The problem arises when clubs fail to accurately identify true superstars.

Germany who previously thrashed both England and Argentina with ease, found a Spanish team extremely difficult to break down.  Instead of attacking, the Germans played on the counter.  They had possession, but in spurts, and rarely ever threatened the Spanish goal.  Poldolski, Ozil, Khedira, Schweinsteiger were all contained and had little to say against the Spanish midfield and defense.  The defensive pair of Puyol and Pique were solid in the back, winning the majority of the aerial balls, while Sergio Ramos and Capdevila minimized any German threat on the flanks.  The double pivot in the midfield of Busquets and Alonso, along with the attacking duo of Xavi and Iniesta, controlled the tempo of the game and quickly recouped stray balls when they lost possession and were sublime in the transition from defense to offense.  This was a complete team effort, which reinforces the old saying that whomever controls the midfield in football, has the best chance to score.

The other key catalyst of the game, was the decision of Vincent Del Bosque to start Pedro instead of Fernando Torres.  Pedro’s speed and width created space for the team and he was always a dangerous threat for the Germans.  Sure Villa is probably more lethal on the left than in the center, as he battled the two tall towers also known as Mertesacker and Freideriech.  But VDB’s tactics paid off in the end and per norm, once Spain have the lead, they wouldn’t let go of the ball.

Germany: Neuer; Lahm, Mertesacker, Friedrich, Jerome Boateng (Jansen, m.52); Khedira (Mario Gómez, m.81), Schweinsteiger, Trochowski (Kroos, m.62), Özil; Podolski and Klose.

Spain: Casillas; Sergio Ramos, Puyol, Piqué, Capdevila; Busquets, Xabi Alonso (Marchena, m.93+), Xavi, Iniesta, Pedro (Silva, m.85); and Villa (Fernando Torres, m.81).

Goal: 0-1, Puyol (73′).

Referee: Viktor Kassai (HUN). No cards.