Who is the most efficient football club in Switzerland?

If I state that the wage bill of a football club is directly related to the club's results on the pitch, many people would not be surprised. In football, it is a common belief that the higher your wage bill, the more points you will have at the end of the season. By looking at the table of any European League, it is mostly easy to see that the biggest, and highest-spending teams are on top. This assumption triggers a lot of clubs to overspend on their wage bill to reach success and climb the table. One of the consequences of this development is a phenomenon called “Rattenrennen”. Prof. Dr. André Bühler beautifully described this phenomenon in the article, which I recommend you read (unfortunately, only available in German).

21st Club Limited stated in their book changing the conversation (which I highly recommend you read too ??) that the correlation in the Premier League between wage bill and points across all teams is 82%. A statistical lesson, we probably all learned during COVID-19 is that correlation does not equal causation. However, this strong correlation is reasonably used to explain why small clubs with the lower-wage bill will finish below the big clubs.

This assumption was never really challenged in the boardrooms. Big clubs chose the easy way to assemble the big stars in their team instead of being innovative and finding new efficient paths to find a competitive advantage. So far, their mentioned business model was still a success as at the end of the season mostly the big clubs won the league. This was reached by overspending and it works if the business runs as usual. However, the covid crisis showed that this business model is not sustainable and endangers the existence of many clubs. 

Not until recently, when the story of Billy Beane’s Oakland Athletics was told in the movie Moneyball only then a few clubs started to do things differently. Clubs like FC Midtjylland and FC Brentford adapted to a new, smart approach that helps to outthink rather than outspend their respective competitors. They are not spending huge amounts on transfers and wages anymore but use sophisticated models to find undervalued talents. Their intention is to allocate smart money in the transfer market to find their competitive advantage through data analytics. This new approach helps them to compete successfully with fewer resources and to challenge the status quo.

In Switzerland there is no team so far, that is known to use sophisticated data in their business model. Even though Switzerland has good preconditions, no one implemented a smart approach consistently. Swiss football is slowly adapting and learning from the best practices like Brentford and Midtjylland.

Nevertheless, I would like to analyze the Swiss Super League to find out if some clubs use their resources more efficiently than others. The graph shows the league table at the end of season 2019/20: 

Graph 1 source: www.sport.de

In Switzerland, BSC Young Boys and FC Basel are the biggest clubs with the highest available resources compared to the rest of the league. The above-stated assumptions can be confirmed for the Swiss Super League too as both teams are on the top ranks of the table.

The following graph compares the wage bill position of the whole first team to the position of the league at the end of the season 2019/20:

If the correlation between wage bill and points at the end of the season would be 1, then the league table would look like graph 2. FC Basel would be Swiss Champion, BSC Young Boy the first runner up and FC Thun would be the bottom of the league. The actual correlation in the Swiss Super League between wage bill and points won in the season 2019/20 is significant (α<0.05) p=0.035 and strong r = 0.668. FC Basel, FC Zürich, and FC Sion lost most positions compared to what the wage bill would suggest. The teams that used their resources more efficiently according to this analysis are FC St. Gallen, Servette FC, and FC Lugano.

Now let us look at the table in a different way. Which team used its resourcees most efficiently and spent the least wage to win one point. The table would look as follows:

The table in graph 3 looks compared to the table in graph 1 quite different. The sporting director of FC Thun Andreas Gerber is famous to reach a lot with almost no resources. The calculation confirms this general knowledge and FC Thun is the club that spent the least money to win one point and thus is the winner of this analysis. Compared to BSC Young Boys and FC Basel, FC Thun uses its resources almost 3 respectively 5 times as efficient. FC Lugano and FC St. Gallen are two other teams that have very efficient spending to win one point. At the bottom of the table is FC Basel with a huge gap to the second last position. FC Basel was not long ago a role model club almost all over Europe with its talent identification and development system. It helped them to developed stars like Ivan Rakitic, Mohamed Salah, Xherdan Shaqiri, Granit Xhaka, and many more. Unfortunately, their recent development does not look like they have a bright future in front of them. FC Sion is another team that has a lot of resources available but due to unstable management can not use them efficiently. For three years BSC Young Boys is the strongest club in Switzerland. The analysis shows, that they pay comparatively quite a lot to become Swiss champions three times in a row. The question BSC Young Boys must ask themself is: how can we stay successful with using less money to win one point and thus become more efficient?

Conclusion

For every club that uses its resources efficiently, there is a club that overspends and gets little return on investment. We can conclude that the correlation between wage bill and success in the Swiss Super League is as in other European Leagues quite strong. BSC Young Boys and FC Basel are competing together to reach the top of the league. To achieve this status both clubs spend a lot of money on the wage and comparatively to other clubs their spending to win one point is quite high. There are three teams that prove that a more efficient approach can be just as effective.

My wish is that clubs in Switzerland start challenging the status quo, learn from best practices, implement a sophisticated data approach to find undervalued players, and have the courage to go against the grain. Only by finding new innovative ways and using its resources efficiently, the Swiss football can compete with its European competition.