Follow This (or don't): @akeenan14
So before I get started on an actual subject that is meaningless and nonsensical, I have to give a link to perhaps the coolest website I have seen in the last fifteen minutes (it might actually have been longer than that, but who the hell can remember back that far), It;s a racial map of the US, and quite possibly the coolest map I've ever seen. One of the things that was so awesome was that you are able to zoom in pretty close to get almost individual counts of the race of a person, if you happen to be able to pinpoint an address. For example, I looked in Washington DC and tried to zoom in on 1700 Pennsylvania Ave - and if you look hard enough, in an area where there aren't too many people living, you happen to see five little green dots that looks pretty much like 1700 Penn. I was, of course, more interested if there was a telling divide in the city of Chicago. And if you look at a map of Chicago, it's pretty clear there are very distinct racial lines around the city and suburbs, both Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic. It's actually a little freaky. But it turns out that if you look at Chicago over the years, you can see that it's been racially segregated for years, and its been actually really stable with some neighborhoods shifting color, but not really integrating in any meaningful way.
Whoa, that shit is heavy. And that's about as in-depth as we are going to get here.
So it looks like Bale is going to move sometime tomorrow. A lot has been written about that, and alot that was actually thoughtful, interesting, and really insightful (I know, those people piss me off too).
And I thinking, what the hell can I add to this conversation. At first, I was trying to figure out where the hell he was going to fit into the squad. I mean a team with Ronaldo, Benzema, Modric, Ozil, Di Maria, Khedira, plus the addition of Isco (should have been a City player) - I mean where does Bale fit in, and how is he going to get shots in that team?
But smarter people have written about that.
So then I was thinking about how did Bale compare to Ronaldo when he set the world record transfer with his switch to Real Madrid. So I am the last person to pay a compliment to Ronaldo, but if you look at the statistics, it becomes pretty clear that while Bale is an outstanding player, he's not nearly at the output level that Ronaldo was when he made the move. I mean Ronaldo had been doing it for a couple of years at Manchester United (now granted, he also had a stronger team around him), whereas Bale has only had really the one break out year last year.
I mean if you look at the last five players who set the transfer record its: Ronaldo (2009), Zidane (2001), Figo (2000), Vieri (1999), and Denilson (1998). So I have to admit I can't really comment on anyone aside from Ronaldo and a little bit about Zidane (only because I started reading about him after the 2006 World Cup - and that's a great statue), and a little bit about Vieri (and that's only because he was still playing as I starting following the European leagues). But looking over the list, is it really likely that Bale deserves to be among those players? Tough to say.
Here's what I can say though. If one does rate him as a potential peer to those who broke the transfer record (remembering that he's only 24 (actually the same age Ronaldo was when he transferred it Madrid)) - he's transfer fee is actually totally in line with historical trends in record breaking transfers (and here's where I dork out briefly):
Going back to 1893 (thank you wikipedia), and taking a natural log of the record breaking transfers, you can actually see that fore most of the time period, it actually follows a pretty linear path. The overall average annual increase from 1893 to 2009 (because who doesn't measure in those sort of increments), is a 12.4% increase per year. I mean holy crap - look at that r-square. That's just a sexy statistic for you right there.
And sure, it looks like it's started to accelerate recently - but even then from 1996 (Alan Shearer) to 2009 that's only an annual increase of 13.7%. I realize I say only, which is crap when the average person gets an annual raise somewhere in the 1% to 4% range - so in that context 12.4% on average is just stupid. Stupid it may be, but it's stupidly consistent.
Hell, if Bale ends up transferring for 86 million pounds, that actually falls a little below the fit line, which would have expected 87 million last year and a 98 million pound transfer this year.
So from what I can tell, it's not the transfer market at all that's going crazy (well, at least record breaking transfers) - it's a process that has been freakishly consistent for over a hundred years. And next year it will probably break 100 million pounds (although I can imagine there's a mental barrier to that, it would be in line with trend).
And if any team is going to do it, it'll probably be Real Madrid since they busted the transfer record that last five out of six times (assuming Bale).
So before I get started on an actual subject that is meaningless and nonsensical, I have to give a link to perhaps the coolest website I have seen in the last fifteen minutes (it might actually have been longer than that, but who the hell can remember back that far), It;s a racial map of the US, and quite possibly the coolest map I've ever seen. One of the things that was so awesome was that you are able to zoom in pretty close to get almost individual counts of the race of a person, if you happen to be able to pinpoint an address. For example, I looked in Washington DC and tried to zoom in on 1700 Pennsylvania Ave - and if you look hard enough, in an area where there aren't too many people living, you happen to see five little green dots that looks pretty much like 1700 Penn. I was, of course, more interested if there was a telling divide in the city of Chicago. And if you look at a map of Chicago, it's pretty clear there are very distinct racial lines around the city and suburbs, both Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic. It's actually a little freaky. But it turns out that if you look at Chicago over the years, you can see that it's been racially segregated for years, and its been actually really stable with some neighborhoods shifting color, but not really integrating in any meaningful way.
Whoa, that shit is heavy. And that's about as in-depth as we are going to get here.
So it looks like Bale is going to move sometime tomorrow. A lot has been written about that, and alot that was actually thoughtful, interesting, and really insightful (I know, those people piss me off too).
And I thinking, what the hell can I add to this conversation. At first, I was trying to figure out where the hell he was going to fit into the squad. I mean a team with Ronaldo, Benzema, Modric, Ozil, Di Maria, Khedira, plus the addition of Isco (should have been a City player) - I mean where does Bale fit in, and how is he going to get shots in that team?
But smarter people have written about that.
So then I was thinking about how did Bale compare to Ronaldo when he set the world record transfer with his switch to Real Madrid. So I am the last person to pay a compliment to Ronaldo, but if you look at the statistics, it becomes pretty clear that while Bale is an outstanding player, he's not nearly at the output level that Ronaldo was when he made the move. I mean Ronaldo had been doing it for a couple of years at Manchester United (now granted, he also had a stronger team around him), whereas Bale has only had really the one break out year last year.
I mean if you look at the last five players who set the transfer record its: Ronaldo (2009), Zidane (2001), Figo (2000), Vieri (1999), and Denilson (1998). So I have to admit I can't really comment on anyone aside from Ronaldo and a little bit about Zidane (only because I started reading about him after the 2006 World Cup - and that's a great statue), and a little bit about Vieri (and that's only because he was still playing as I starting following the European leagues). But looking over the list, is it really likely that Bale deserves to be among those players? Tough to say.
Here's what I can say though. If one does rate him as a potential peer to those who broke the transfer record (remembering that he's only 24 (actually the same age Ronaldo was when he transferred it Madrid)) - he's transfer fee is actually totally in line with historical trends in record breaking transfers (and here's where I dork out briefly):
And sure, it looks like it's started to accelerate recently - but even then from 1996 (Alan Shearer) to 2009 that's only an annual increase of 13.7%. I realize I say only, which is crap when the average person gets an annual raise somewhere in the 1% to 4% range - so in that context 12.4% on average is just stupid. Stupid it may be, but it's stupidly consistent.
Hell, if Bale ends up transferring for 86 million pounds, that actually falls a little below the fit line, which would have expected 87 million last year and a 98 million pound transfer this year.
So from what I can tell, it's not the transfer market at all that's going crazy (well, at least record breaking transfers) - it's a process that has been freakishly consistent for over a hundred years. And next year it will probably break 100 million pounds (although I can imagine there's a mental barrier to that, it would be in line with trend).
And if any team is going to do it, it'll probably be Real Madrid since they busted the transfer record that last five out of six times (assuming Bale).
