When Football Meets Data
A data-visualization project exploring global football transfers and team performance.
Introduction
Football is the most popular sport on the planet, followed passionately by over 4 billion fans across every continent. It’s more than just a game, it’s a powerful cultural phenomenon and a multi-billion-euro global industry where emotions, fierce competition, and massive financial investments collide. From local street matches to the grand stages of international tournaments, football unites people, drives economies, and inspires generations.
In recent years, football clubs have been spending increasing amounts of money to sign top players. This trend is clearly illustrated in the graph on the right, which shows the average transfer fee per season from 2000 to 2019. The sharp rise in spending highlights how competitive and commercially driven the sport has become.
Although the average transfer fee that clubs pay has been steadily increasing over time, highlighting the growing financial weight of player acquisitions in modern football, a different story emerges when we shift our focus from cost to volume. The number of transfers varies significantly from one league to another. The chart on the left showcases the top leagues by number of transfers between 2000 and 2018, revealing that leagues like the Premier League and Serie A dominate in sheer transfer activity, while others lag behind.
But why is this the case? Why do some leagues engage in significantly more transfer activity than others? Factors such as league size, financial power, transfer regulations, and even strategic philosophies play a major role. Some leagues operate with higher player turnover, while others invest in long-term squad development. Furthermore, this raises an interesting question: Does a higher number of transfers correlate with better club performance? Or can stability and continuity outperform constant squad reshuffling?
Search for your club
Navigate through the interactive map :
- Select a year perdiod in the menus above : the map will display data only for the period bounded by these years.
- Click on a club to display the transfers of the club for the selected period. The player transfers will display as arrows, with their weights and color proportional to the transfer fee. For example, a red arrow indicates a transfer of more than 20M$.
- Click on "View Details" on a club to analyze the club data more in depth. See by yourself !
Team Name
Team: N/A
Country: N/A
League: N/A
Coordinates: N/A
About
Mathurin Chritin
Georg Schwabedal
Amene Gafsi
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Professor Laurent Vuillon and the entire teaching staff for their guidance and support throughout this project. The Data Visualization course has been an incredible journey that allowed us to explore the fascinating intersection of football and data analysis. We've learned valuable skills and had a lot of fun bringing this project to life!