Why are deep-lying midfielders getting more expensive?
Tifo Football Podcast
The Athletic
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2023
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jon Mackenzie, Stuart James and Mark Carey are here to discuss why deep-lying midfielders becoming so expensive.
How much did the sale of Enzo Fernandez influence the value of “Number 6s” recently?
What skillset does an elite Number 6 have?
How scarce is that skillset?
This episode of the Tifo Football Podcast is presented by Jon Mackenzie, produced by Mike Zimmermann.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic. |
| 0:07.8 | Hello and welcome to the TIFO podcast. I'm John McKenzie and I'm joined as I always am by my good friend and producer Mike Zimmerman. Mike, how are you doing? |
| 0:15.6 | I'm doing good John. How are you? I'm doing very well because we are on the final straight towards the transfer window closing |
| 0:21.9 | and by the time this episode comes out we will be free Mike. |
| 0:25.9 | We'll be free from all of that. |
| 0:28.2 | But that is not what we're talking about today. |
| 0:30.5 | We are talking about something much more interesting than the transfer window. |
| 0:34.0 | We are talking about deep lying midfielders and particularly why are deep-lying midfielers |
| 0:38.5 | actually costing a lot more these days. You've just listened to that conversation. What did |
| 0:43.0 | you make of it? I mean, I think it's the biggest topic of this transfer window. We've seen |
| 0:49.4 | Cicado. We've seen Rice go for a lot of money. Last year, we saw Casamiro go for 70 million euros. |
| 0:56.3 | And I think kind of the key takeaway that I have from that conversation is that the reason why |
| 1:02.7 | they're moving for a lot of money is that their skill set is actually pretty rare compared to |
| 1:08.2 | the rest of the players on the pitch. So we got into that and I think |
| 1:12.8 | that was really fascinating. Yeah, it's a really, really fun conversation. And I think with that |
| 1:17.0 | in mind, the best thing for us to do is to just jump straight in. So here we are talking about |
| 1:21.6 | deep-lying playmakers and the phenomenon of them costing a lot of money. |
| 1:36.4 | Now you may have noticed that something strange has happened in the last few transfer windows that goes against the received wisdom of player fees. |
| 1:40.1 | Deep-lying midfielders have become much, much more expensive, so much so that some of them have entered the top 10 list of all-time transfers by fee. Now, previously, the general rule has been that the closer towards the opposition's goal that a player operates, the bigger the fee they command. But this is clearly not the case anymore. But fortunately, I'm joined by two guests who can help us demystify this phenomenon. So first we've got Stuart James, who is one of |
| 2:01.2 | our senior writers at the Athletic and a former player, Stu. Welcome on the show. Thanks very much |
| 2:06.0 | having me on. And alongside him, we have one of the athletics data analyst Mark Carey, who will hopefully |
| 2:11.1 | throw us some numerical answers as well. So Mark, great to have you on too. Pleasure to be on, John. |
... |
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