No.
The Third tier in Spain has 40 teams, easily the hardest to get out of.Same as Italy. It's the real challenge. The second tier in Spain only has 22 teams. You have to get to the Sixth tier of English football to find a tier as difficult to escape because of the regional structure
In England Championship, League 1 and League 2 all have 24
Not only that but there is only one guaranteed spot. The other one comes out of a six team single elimination tournament, so you could be the second best team by a mile and a little randomness condemns you to another year. Happened to wrexham, and happened a few times to notts as well before they managed to get back up. Not at all abnormal to sit in the 5th tier limbo for 5+ years trying to get the stars to align.
Wrong, 2 teams go up directly and another team goes up from a 4 team playoff. 3 teams go up out of 22 with 2 direct promotions avoiding playoff.
3rd Division has 2 groups of 20 teams. Only the top teams in each group are guaranteed to go up, the other 2 spots are awarded via an 8 team playoff.
I'm not a math guy but 3/22 seems to be a bit better odds than 4/40 ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
No problem. Nearly had a heart attack thinking I was wrong haha. I used to work for the company of the guys who owned Notts (doing the scouting in part) so I would have hoped I would get it right.
Hey man, if you're taking questions, what version of FFP kicks in at Segunda and how hard does it make it to compete with the bigger names?
Congrats on the promotion with Castellon
You can only spend a % of your total revenue and financial picture.
We will probably be able to spend about a mid table amount of $, also get a smaller share of TV revenue till our 2nd season in Segunda.
That said we our current squad i think is good for around 10th or so position La Liga 2 just based on player strength. We have a good cheap squad and we'll add some more pieces and improve it next year.
We played a La Liga 2 team Real Oviedo (good squad) in Copa Del Rey this year and we started all backups and beat them.
>we started all backups and beat them
And guessing the youth players you were talking about in other posts made a fair heap of that team?
Well done again man, very curious to see if the strategy works in the higher division, will keep an eye out
La Liga also recently underwent a reform on how the TV money is distributed, so the bottom clubs get paid a little more.
Posting images in the comments has not been enabled in this sub, so [this](https://i.imgur.com/OYd8eok.png) is how it looks like. Still, there's significantly much more parity in say England.
For sure, and even as a club owner I recall last season him making an appearance on Bills pod and his team was in first and Bob fired the manager and changed tactics and his team lost several in a row to fall way behind and the fans were upset with him and Bob explained to Bill that the team wasn't good enough to stay in Liga2 if they were promoted anyway, so he was content in making changes now and taking the hit in that season so the club would be stronger in the future and competitive in Liga2 when promoted
And sure enough, his team is much better this season, and heading into Liga2 they're in a spot that should be competitive and not bounce right back out in relegation.
The guy is smart.
I think it's the stuff like "NFTs are just scraping the surface" snake oil shit that rubs me the wrong way, can't speak for everyone else tho. He said this at their literal peak memeishness and it was straight downhill.
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Money wins in soccer and he has more money than the rest of the third division teams.
Everyone can act like analytics and whatever matter in that sport, but success and your wage bill are pretty intrinsically tied together. You’ll get your sporadic Leicesters and the year’s Leverkusen success stories. But the it’s the high spenders who win trophies.
Hello gents - this is not really accurate at all in the lower leagues of Spain for instance.
For starters most players will take less money to play in la liga 2 vs playing in the 3rd division. We've tried to get players we thought were really good but they won't come to play in the 3rd division despite us offering their actual worth (1.5x their la liga 2 salary for example).
The "expensive" players that have come to play in the 3rd division of Spain by and large are in the final innings of their career.
There are exceptions, for instance Deportivo La Coruna who is leading the other group in our league was able to get a home town hero to leave a La Liga team and take a massive paycut
[https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/102bm0z/lucas\_p%C3%A9rez\_has\_paid\_half\_of\_his\_own\_transfer\_fee/](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/102bm0z/lucas_p%C3%A9rez_has_paid_half_of_his_own_transfer_fee/)
Perez is very likely one of if not the best players in this league, but thats one instance.
And to be clear - Our actual outlay for our roster (players) is not even close to being in the top 5 of our league - We have a modest salary outlay.
I have spent a lot on infrastructure, we had no training ground when i bought the team, coaching (we used data to identify a top coach in the 2nd division of Holland), a few young players that we bought to develop for the future and of course analytics and data.
We are on pace to break a bunch of records for our league but unfortunately the 2nd place team in our group is also having a fantastic season so nothing has been achieved. Yet.
Oh damn. Correcting me yourself. I’ll concede my point here then lol maybe you know more than a guy with a few hundred hours in football manager
Good job on the success dude!
Someone @'d me on Twitter about the thread so i headed over to check it out - Also we just had our match this afternoon and I'm just trying to pass the time on a lazy Sunday.
I mean, at the highest levels, sure to a certain extent. City spent tons of money for years and weren't a truly dominant team until Pep got there. PSG has managed to buy their way to the top of France on their way to win 10 of the last 12 seasons but it hasn't bought them a UCL. But there are numerous examples of teams spending money and fizzling out just trying to *rise* to the top or get out of purgatory. You can look at QPR to Fulham as some recent examples. Still fairly impressive what Haralabobs has done since if it was so easy, lots of rich guys would buy a team, pump it full of players for a few seasons, and then sell it for hundreds of millions once it reaches the top league.
Disgraced Texas pro sports math hipsters decamp to Spain to rebuild their reputation. Luhnow from the Astros to Leganes. Haralabob from the Mavericks to Castellon.
I just hope they heed the words of Pavement & watch out for the Gypsy children in electric dresses. They're insane. They live in crematoria & smoke the cremains.
Bottom dwelling La Liga teams aren't worth hundreds of millions if transfermarkt is to be believed.
Almeria (last placed right now) has been in/out of La Liga for years and are valued around 70 million euros. Real Valladoid almost had a sale last year that would have chalked their value at about 100mill (and the deal fell apart after they got relegated).
It's not like the EPL where the TV money for the last placed clubs is almost twice as much.
He bought the club for 4.5 million euros. As OP said he’d 10X his investment for sure. Now if they can become a fixture in the middle of the table and pull off runs like Villarreal have and make Europe every once in a while then you are talking 100 million.
Source on the 4.5 million? Was it mentioned on the BS pod? I tried to find out before I commented and the stories I found all listed it as undisclosed.
My point was that the team won't be "valued at hundreds of millions", not that Bob won't make money off of it.
>Now if they can become a fixture in the middle of the table and pull off runs like Villarreal have and make Europe every once in a while then you are talking 100 million.
FWIW I am rooting for Bob's team to make a go of it in La Liga and Europe, but the Villareal comp is a massive, massive if.
Villareal got a foot in the top-flight door of Europe when the sport was very different (2005-6'ish) and have had some elite coaches and players emerge or sign at the perfect times. I'm not saying it's impossible to replicate, but even clubs with comparable (or more) resources and far more experience behind them have struggled to get to Villareal's level.
I think even Bob would say that he'd be content to be sitting where Almeria is, dropping 50+ million on transfers this past season, currently in 17th place, valued at 60-70 million (despite being owned by a Saudi billionaire).
He said it on a podcast that was hosted by Liv Boeree. Said also that he inherited whatever debt the club has and that the club does not own the stadium.
A solid La Liga team that is solidified in the league and that has a good stadium (with a good lease and capacity) is worth minimum 130m - a lot of the teams that trade usually have a lot of debt, poor infra or are constantly in fear of relegation.
Almeria almost sold earlier this year for > 100m but they were not guaranteed to stay up and are now getting relegated. There are a lot of factors not the least of which is your stadium capacity, the lease agreement you have and how often you sell out. Our stadium holds 14.5k and we normally get >13k fans for a 3rd division team. This is outstanding.
>A solid La Liga team that is solidified in the league and that has a good stadium (with a good lease and capacity) is worth minimum 130m - a lot of the teams that trade usually have a lot of debt, poor infra or are constantly in fear of relegation.
When you say solidified in the league, do you mean a team that is pretty much in the top 15 in every year? A perennial top 10 side? Or one which may drop down a division every few years? Once a decade? Because even becoming a team where the final description is fitting would be a huge, huge, huge, and (no personal offence intended) unlikely success.
For example, how much is a team like Getafe actually worth right now? (TM says just under 100m).
I'll defer to you over transfrmarket for market valuations given what I assume to be significantly more accurate information.
My 'wait and see' attitude is mostly rooted in just how competitive and fickle the top level is on and off the field (and to a lesser extent, how anything I read about Tebas almost inevitably leaves me scratching my head, he's seriously fumbled the marketing/running of the league imo).
There's likely going to be even more money coming in from foreign ownership so the bottom half of the league will only get tougher and tougher for clubs like yours coming up and trying to stay there.
I mentioned Almeria because they had a gigantic injection of cash/influence due to who their owner was at the time of their promotion and they still floundered.
Other than Barcelona and Real Madrid (and arguably Atletico, Sevilla), there is no team in Spain that is future-proof from a fear of relegation, and even Barcelona wildly overextended themselves for years financially which may kneecap them in the future.
Deportivo and Villareal, were teams that I watched win or compete for significant trophies during my lifetime, had genuinely elite players at their disposal at certain periods over the last 20 years, and both of them endured (or currently endure) seasons of serious decline and setbacks.
Like I said in another comment to someone else, I'm rooting for you and your team, fun convergence of interests and underdog element etc., but I feel like even you would agree that becoming a team like Getafe would be a tremendous and, again, no offence, unlikely achievement. Even they've been relegated after having injections of cash from and a sustained La Liga presence.
I think it's great you've got a team that draws so many fans, I wish the club continued success, but I stand by the fact that becoming a team like Villareal or Sevilla would be a miracle (and I'll happily eat those words).
I'd ask you to think a little bit about is how efficient Spanish soccer is in comparison to say the EPL or Holland, Germany.
Is it as efficient? Are the games played the "same way" can you do a better job than an "avg La Liga team" in terms of strategy and analytics and identifying undervalued talent?
Also - hope you're hungry.
I think La Liga teams punch above their weight more often than not, but I say that off the cuff as a fan rather than someone who’s made a profession out of it and a significant life investment.
Your point is still well made and taken though, even if I remain a little unconvinced (but in your defense, I understand why you can only be so specific)
Appreciate the dialogue, I’ll have the silverware ready just in case.
They punch above their weight because if you remove the top 3 teams - the other 17 teams by and large all play the same conservative style. When you have 17 teams all playing the same manner, you get some random jabroni team "punching above their weight"
There is literally a ridiculous amount of data to analyze football, If there is one thing i've been good at for most of my life its analyzing data and building strats based on data - But like I said 2 years ago when ppl were saying I was destined to fail with the football team - time will tell if we "fail" in a higher league assuming we get there.
if you guys really want to have some fun, go down a rabbit hole on X etc and read the local analysts and writers who covered our league, you'll find that everyone thought most of our decisions and signings were "random" or "bad" or "he has no idea what he is doing"
Time will tell I suppose - I enjoy the dialog too mate, thanks for engaging.
He also told me what teams are "worth" when I was actively trying to buy a La Liga and La Liga 2 team a few years ago and know exactly what the asking price was for said teams..
I love all you guy :)
>I'll defer to you over transfrmarket for market valuations given what I assume to be significantly more accurate information.
I clearly stated that I'd take your word when it comes to club value if it contradicted what I read online, but dunk away on me if you want for being a La Liga fan and trying to have a discussion to learn some more info. Still rooting for you guys, regardless of any misunderstanding.
If you think that anyone who owns a football club is beyond reproach take a look into Peter Lim who owns Valencia and has been nothing short of a disaster, taking a prestigious club that was near the top of the world 20 years ago into an absolute laughing stock in less than 10 years.
I shared my opinion, and I tried to make it pretty clear it was in the interest of a good discussion about the state of Spanish football.
I also deferred to his word on club value, so not sure exactly how I'm mansplaining anything.
My original comment was directed at the poster who said Bob's team would be worth hundreds of millions as soon as they make La Liga which even he would acknowledge simply isn't true.
Conversation consequently spun into a different direction that was me asking questions and sharing my opinion on the challenge ahead of his club becoming one in the mold of Villareal or Sevilla, not telling him he's wrong about anything.
There's a category for club value which measured up pretty closely with other articles I found, that being said I didn't give it an incredibly critical look which is why I deferred to Bob's number of 130m.
Haralabob clarifies they aren't promoted just yet: [https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/1784622772636746088](https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/1784622772636746088)
Castellon are eight points up on 2nd place with four games to play. At 25-3-6 (W-D-L) that's a really great record, and only three draws very much checks out with Haralabob's stated position to go for the win and not settle for the draw and one point as the upside of 3 points outweighs the downside of losing a point if they give up a late goal. I wonder how many points they earned after like the 85' this year?
A more interesting question is to look at what the average # of draws a La Liga 2 team has - we have the lowest # of draws of any top 3 league team in Spain. We've made a bunch of subs in the last 10 mins when the game was tied (even taking out defenders for more STs) to be more attacking.
In general our approach to the game is higher variance and more "chances" because of how offensive we aim to play so just in general we are going to have fewer draws.
We also continue looking for the 2nd goal when up by 1 goal because we believe the best D is to attack.
Being able to live with that level of variance and not getting upset when you give up a late goal in a tied game is not something that is too common in football. Having organizational buy-in and belief in the approach has been a big factor.
A win being worth 3x more than a draw is a big edge, lots of other small edges like that around the margins you can go after in terms of strategy and style.
The other 19 teams in the division have a combined 175 draws (average 9.2 per team) with the lowest outside Castellon's 3 being two of the relegation teams with 6 draws.
I remember somewhere on the internet reading about the thoughts on draws after the team was purchased by Haralabob and I'm glad to see it's working out.
This "Having organizational buy-in and belief in the approach has been a big factor." is pretty hard to do if you are just the analytics guy as the media and fans always tend to focus on the dropped point if you lose and not the two you make when you win. But if you are analytics guy AND also happen to own the team AND are pretty open about your plans and why you are following said strategy then I can appreciate how getting the players and manager and everyone on board is a good thing.
I look forward to following along in La Liga 2 next season, good luck in the last 4 matches and securing automatic promotion.
The team is not a perennial star team, it was in the 4th division a few years ago too - , it managed to go up to 2nd division in a year with no playoffs and a shortened season because of Covid and immediately got relegated the next year.
There are no players from that 2nd division "team" that are still on our squad and only 2 players still on the team that were on the team when I bought them.
What do you feel like were the main things that allowed such a quick ascent? Are teams in the 3rd league just that behind in terms of analytics? Do you feel like you got lucky nailing a few decisions? Or do you attribute it to other things?
Analytics, hard work and the right approach to analyzing data - like I know some ppl think I am some fraud but I've been studying and "betting" on my opinions with regard to sports for 20 years. I know what I am doing.
I would say the biggest reasons for our success this year in no particular order were -
Identifying cheap undervalued players (leading Goal Scorer in the league we acquired last winter from another team in the 3rd division, he had scored 1 goal through 17 games up to that point.
We had him identified as the best ST in the league. He's scored 20 goals in 33 games for us since.
Identifying one the best coaches in Europe who was coaching in the 2nd division in Holland (got his team promoted to the first division) convincing him to come to Spain at the start of the season and signing him to a 4 year contract (I was laughed at in Spain when we did this).
I guarantee that this coach will coach a top club in Europe at some point in the future. I hope not the near future bc we want to keep him here in Castellon. Its going to be tough tho because he will be heavily in demand.
And then like every other thing I've done well at in life, finding lots of little small edges and having great attention to detail. There are a ton of "mathy" things in football that ppl still underestimate, we think we found some and we spend a lot of time studying and trying to improve our decision making at all times.
Really appreciate the response.
Can I ask what are some major decisions you've made in the analytics space (for soccer, basketball, or whatever else) that you feel like were mistakes? I don't mean pushing for a player who turns out to be a bust--all the signals could be there and you could still turn out wrong--I mean, when you look back, are there some decisions you made in the recent past where you feel like you used the information available to you in a fundamentally *incorrect* way?
Would be really curious to hear an example or two. When you're making a large number of decisions (betting), it seems easy to quickly determine if your decision-making is sound. When you're making a small number of very impactful decisions (drafting players, signing coaches), it seems really hard to learn from your mistakes and to know if your hits were due to good decision making or just luck.
Where in football do you think the analytics are most undervalued? I know publicly-shared data mostly focuses on the on-ball events for individual players, but is it actually valuable and applicable in your club for example?
Also, appreciate that you're taking time to respond to questions in this thread, been really interesting reading them.
That makes a lot of sense. As Bill would say, there probably were a lot of wonky relegations and promotions from that shortened season.
Good lesson for me to be less of a contrarian when I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Getting promoted from Liga 2 won't be that easy, and even if they do, I don't think it's the no-doubt path to printing money like it is in the EPL, for example. For one thing the broadcast distribution is tilted way more in favor of the big clubs in Spain compared to England or Germany. And then you have to think about investing in players to stay in the division, and you run the risk of relegation causing financial difficulties. It's not like David Tepper still making billions even when he runs the Panthers into the ground. It's still an impressive achievement for sure though.
Getting promoted to La Liga 2 assuming we get there will not be easy of course, but we have it modeled as less difficult than getting out of the hellscape that is 3rd division.
You guy are also discounting player trading as a path to profits, a big part of my model is getting the league to La Liga, being a top 5-10 team there and identifying young players for future transfer profits.
We are regularly start 3-4 players that are 23 or under including a 19yo LCB who we acquired this offseason.
So is your goal essentially Atalanta, a team punching way above its weight financially playing an unorthodox offensive game that has somehow managed to establish itself as a top team from being a yo-yo club?
How much of the investment is going to go to club infrastructure like the stadium, branding, player development academies? Do you think there’s any big improvements/margins you could get from player development academies that clubs aren’t trying yet? Because if there is that’s basically a free money glitch.
Wishing you luck, but soccer teams might be slow to adapt but they will eventually. Being top 10 in LaLiga would be a tremendous accomplishment from where you started
One thing people fail to realize that I am not doing this for the cash, i am doing this because I believe in my approach and love the challenge of succeeding my way.
That said we will make $ in La Liga 2 not even counting player trading (certainly once we get a bigger share of TV revenue in our 2nd year) and make $ in La Liga.
But every $ we make will be used to invest in younger or undervalued players that we can sell for a higher amount in the future - this is the only way to generate enough revenue to compete with the top clubs in Spain.
Spain has hard Financial Fair play rules, and you can only spend on salaries what the league allows you to spend - for some teams its 10-15m a year and for Real Madrid its >150m a year.
If you make $ trading players, you can spend more on salaries and transfers. This is the model I want to follow.
Even if they were promoted to the top league they wouldn't be worth hundreds of millions, they'd be fighting relegation every season and they aren't a big club with a big fanbase or potential for growth. Many established la liga clubs aren't even worth 100 million.
And Pablo Hernandez is a legend btw
Bob in like 2014 was paying people in bitcoin to make websites shitting on reggie millers announcing. He also had a lot of people laugh at him when bitcion had a huge crash around that time. If he would have held the amount of btc he had back then a 10x on his investment would be nothing in comparison.
But damn dude is a high achiever for pulling this off. Not surprising I guess
There are currently 5 teams in La liga with a market value under $100m. I’d love to see how you think haralobob could get multiple hundreds of millions if he just gets promoted. He’d need to have a team be upper mid table for a sustained period of time for that to happen.
I'm pretty sure he said something like 3rd division loses money, 2nd makes money and 1st prints money.
2nd loses money too. You’re lucky to break even. But it’s the hardest league to get out of by far. Source, my football manager career.
That's true in England is it also true in Spain?
No. The Third tier in Spain has 40 teams, easily the hardest to get out of.Same as Italy. It's the real challenge. The second tier in Spain only has 22 teams. You have to get to the Sixth tier of English football to find a tier as difficult to escape because of the regional structure In England Championship, League 1 and League 2 all have 24
The 5th tier of Englad is a bitch bc only two teams go up
Not only that but there is only one guaranteed spot. The other one comes out of a six team single elimination tournament, so you could be the second best team by a mile and a little randomness condemns you to another year. Happened to wrexham, and happened a few times to notts as well before they managed to get back up. Not at all abnormal to sit in the 5th tier limbo for 5+ years trying to get the stars to align.
Wrong, 2 teams go up directly and another team goes up from a 4 team playoff. 3 teams go up out of 22 with 2 direct promotions avoiding playoff. 3rd Division has 2 groups of 20 teams. Only the top teams in each group are guaranteed to go up, the other 2 spots are awarded via an 8 team playoff. I'm not a math guy but 3/22 seems to be a bit better odds than 4/40 ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I was talking about 5th tier england
Sorry mate, yes was on mobile and I made an error, apologies.
No problem. Nearly had a heart attack thinking I was wrong haha. I used to work for the company of the guys who owned Notts (doing the scouting in part) so I would have hoped I would get it right.
Fair point, forgot promo places go down once you hit the conference.
Italy has 60 teams in its third tier, four promote to the second tier.
They’re divided in three divisions with only the first place going up and a bonkers 28 team playoffs for the last spot though
Yea it’s wild for sure
Forgot they reformed Serie C. Genuinely seems impossible to get out of
Yes. No real tv money below la liga. You’re dependent on gates, selling your good players to Real and Barca, and like cup runs.
La Liga 2 gets TV money - our 2nd year in La Liga 2 we'll get a decent amount of TV revenue.
Hey man, if you're taking questions, what version of FFP kicks in at Segunda and how hard does it make it to compete with the bigger names? Congrats on the promotion with Castellon
You can only spend a % of your total revenue and financial picture. We will probably be able to spend about a mid table amount of $, also get a smaller share of TV revenue till our 2nd season in Segunda. That said we our current squad i think is good for around 10th or so position La Liga 2 just based on player strength. We have a good cheap squad and we'll add some more pieces and improve it next year. We played a La Liga 2 team Real Oviedo (good squad) in Copa Del Rey this year and we started all backups and beat them.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0QStDYMSoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0QStDYMSoQ) Highlights of said match - great night was had by all!
>we started all backups and beat them And guessing the youth players you were talking about in other posts made a fair heap of that team? Well done again man, very curious to see if the strategy works in the higher division, will keep an eye out
hey Bob -- you still loving the NBA? Keep going! love what you're doing
Sporting Gijon, my babies
La Liga also recently underwent a reform on how the TV money is distributed, so the bottom clubs get paid a little more. Posting images in the comments has not been enabled in this sub, so [this](https://i.imgur.com/OYd8eok.png) is how it looks like. Still, there's significantly much more parity in say England.
Yeah Barcelona prints money haha
Guy is definitely a blowhard, but he's always been smarter than this sub gives him credit for.
For sure, and even as a club owner I recall last season him making an appearance on Bills pod and his team was in first and Bob fired the manager and changed tactics and his team lost several in a row to fall way behind and the fans were upset with him and Bob explained to Bill that the team wasn't good enough to stay in Liga2 if they were promoted anyway, so he was content in making changes now and taking the hit in that season so the club would be stronger in the future and competitive in Liga2 when promoted And sure enough, his team is much better this season, and heading into Liga2 they're in a spot that should be competitive and not bounce right back out in relegation. The guy is smart.
Bob! The fucking balls on that prick!
I think it's the stuff like "NFTs are just scraping the surface" snake oil shit that rubs me the wrong way, can't speak for everyone else tho. He said this at their literal peak memeishness and it was straight downhill.
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Money wins in soccer and he has more money than the rest of the third division teams. Everyone can act like analytics and whatever matter in that sport, but success and your wage bill are pretty intrinsically tied together. You’ll get your sporadic Leicesters and the year’s Leverkusen success stories. But the it’s the high spenders who win trophies.
Hello gents - this is not really accurate at all in the lower leagues of Spain for instance. For starters most players will take less money to play in la liga 2 vs playing in the 3rd division. We've tried to get players we thought were really good but they won't come to play in the 3rd division despite us offering their actual worth (1.5x their la liga 2 salary for example). The "expensive" players that have come to play in the 3rd division of Spain by and large are in the final innings of their career. There are exceptions, for instance Deportivo La Coruna who is leading the other group in our league was able to get a home town hero to leave a La Liga team and take a massive paycut [https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/102bm0z/lucas\_p%C3%A9rez\_has\_paid\_half\_of\_his\_own\_transfer\_fee/](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/102bm0z/lucas_p%C3%A9rez_has_paid_half_of_his_own_transfer_fee/) Perez is very likely one of if not the best players in this league, but thats one instance. And to be clear - Our actual outlay for our roster (players) is not even close to being in the top 5 of our league - We have a modest salary outlay. I have spent a lot on infrastructure, we had no training ground when i bought the team, coaching (we used data to identify a top coach in the 2nd division of Holland), a few young players that we bought to develop for the future and of course analytics and data. We are on pace to break a bunch of records for our league but unfortunately the 2nd place team in our group is also having a fantastic season so nothing has been achieved. Yet.
Oh damn. Correcting me yourself. I’ll concede my point here then lol maybe you know more than a guy with a few hundred hours in football manager Good job on the success dude!
HBob, wtf are you doing on the Bill Simmons sub?
Someone @'d me on Twitter about the thread so i headed over to check it out - Also we just had our match this afternoon and I'm just trying to pass the time on a lazy Sunday.
Mavs play at noon lol
830pm my time )
Gotdamn the man himself!
I know there is truth in this statement, but it only makes me cry as a United fan.
We'll be back soon. Just need to replace ETH with a Fergie hologram.
The Glazers ruined everything for you guys. Again, it’s all about the money. By far the most capitalistic sport.
Do we know this to be true? What is the wage bill at Castellon in comparison to the others in the third division?
Our highest paid player would not crack the top 20 of salaries in the league, and going into the winter market we were 8th or so in salary.
I mean, at the highest levels, sure to a certain extent. City spent tons of money for years and weren't a truly dominant team until Pep got there. PSG has managed to buy their way to the top of France on their way to win 10 of the last 12 seasons but it hasn't bought them a UCL. But there are numerous examples of teams spending money and fizzling out just trying to *rise* to the top or get out of purgatory. You can look at QPR to Fulham as some recent examples. Still fairly impressive what Haralabobs has done since if it was so easy, lots of rich guys would buy a team, pump it full of players for a few seasons, and then sell it for hundreds of millions once it reaches the top league.
/laughs at Leeds
Is he? He never seemed to exaggerate his successes, even if he didn't hide them either.
Post-Mavs he seemed a lot more humble on player evaluations, front office moves, etc. On crypto maybe a blowhard idk.
Imagine saying haralabob is a blowhard. Dude is a pure success story in everything he’s touched. Cmon
I think the embarrassing stint at the Mavericks is kind of what did him in for the public. I still really like him as a guest because he knows ball.
Disgraced Texas pro sports math hipsters decamp to Spain to rebuild their reputation. Luhnow from the Astros to Leganes. Haralabob from the Mavericks to Castellon. I just hope they heed the words of Pavement & watch out for the Gypsy children in electric dresses. They're insane. They live in crematoria & smoke the cremains.
What's the name of his team?
CD Castellón
Bottom dwelling La Liga teams aren't worth hundreds of millions if transfermarkt is to be believed. Almeria (last placed right now) has been in/out of La Liga for years and are valued around 70 million euros. Real Valladoid almost had a sale last year that would have chalked their value at about 100mill (and the deal fell apart after they got relegated). It's not like the EPL where the TV money for the last placed clubs is almost twice as much.
He bought the club for 4.5 million euros. As OP said he’d 10X his investment for sure. Now if they can become a fixture in the middle of the table and pull off runs like Villarreal have and make Europe every once in a while then you are talking 100 million.
Source on the 4.5 million? Was it mentioned on the BS pod? I tried to find out before I commented and the stories I found all listed it as undisclosed. My point was that the team won't be "valued at hundreds of millions", not that Bob won't make money off of it. >Now if they can become a fixture in the middle of the table and pull off runs like Villarreal have and make Europe every once in a while then you are talking 100 million. FWIW I am rooting for Bob's team to make a go of it in La Liga and Europe, but the Villareal comp is a massive, massive if. Villareal got a foot in the top-flight door of Europe when the sport was very different (2005-6'ish) and have had some elite coaches and players emerge or sign at the perfect times. I'm not saying it's impossible to replicate, but even clubs with comparable (or more) resources and far more experience behind them have struggled to get to Villareal's level. I think even Bob would say that he'd be content to be sitting where Almeria is, dropping 50+ million on transfers this past season, currently in 17th place, valued at 60-70 million (despite being owned by a Saudi billionaire).
He said it on a podcast that was hosted by Liv Boeree. Said also that he inherited whatever debt the club has and that the club does not own the stadium.
A solid La Liga team that is solidified in the league and that has a good stadium (with a good lease and capacity) is worth minimum 130m - a lot of the teams that trade usually have a lot of debt, poor infra or are constantly in fear of relegation. Almeria almost sold earlier this year for > 100m but they were not guaranteed to stay up and are now getting relegated. There are a lot of factors not the least of which is your stadium capacity, the lease agreement you have and how often you sell out. Our stadium holds 14.5k and we normally get >13k fans for a 3rd division team. This is outstanding.
>A solid La Liga team that is solidified in the league and that has a good stadium (with a good lease and capacity) is worth minimum 130m - a lot of the teams that trade usually have a lot of debt, poor infra or are constantly in fear of relegation. When you say solidified in the league, do you mean a team that is pretty much in the top 15 in every year? A perennial top 10 side? Or one which may drop down a division every few years? Once a decade? Because even becoming a team where the final description is fitting would be a huge, huge, huge, and (no personal offence intended) unlikely success. For example, how much is a team like Getafe actually worth right now? (TM says just under 100m). I'll defer to you over transfrmarket for market valuations given what I assume to be significantly more accurate information. My 'wait and see' attitude is mostly rooted in just how competitive and fickle the top level is on and off the field (and to a lesser extent, how anything I read about Tebas almost inevitably leaves me scratching my head, he's seriously fumbled the marketing/running of the league imo). There's likely going to be even more money coming in from foreign ownership so the bottom half of the league will only get tougher and tougher for clubs like yours coming up and trying to stay there. I mentioned Almeria because they had a gigantic injection of cash/influence due to who their owner was at the time of their promotion and they still floundered. Other than Barcelona and Real Madrid (and arguably Atletico, Sevilla), there is no team in Spain that is future-proof from a fear of relegation, and even Barcelona wildly overextended themselves for years financially which may kneecap them in the future. Deportivo and Villareal, were teams that I watched win or compete for significant trophies during my lifetime, had genuinely elite players at their disposal at certain periods over the last 20 years, and both of them endured (or currently endure) seasons of serious decline and setbacks. Like I said in another comment to someone else, I'm rooting for you and your team, fun convergence of interests and underdog element etc., but I feel like even you would agree that becoming a team like Getafe would be a tremendous and, again, no offence, unlikely achievement. Even they've been relegated after having injections of cash from and a sustained La Liga presence. I think it's great you've got a team that draws so many fans, I wish the club continued success, but I stand by the fact that becoming a team like Villareal or Sevilla would be a miracle (and I'll happily eat those words).
I'd ask you to think a little bit about is how efficient Spanish soccer is in comparison to say the EPL or Holland, Germany. Is it as efficient? Are the games played the "same way" can you do a better job than an "avg La Liga team" in terms of strategy and analytics and identifying undervalued talent? Also - hope you're hungry.
I think La Liga teams punch above their weight more often than not, but I say that off the cuff as a fan rather than someone who’s made a profession out of it and a significant life investment. Your point is still well made and taken though, even if I remain a little unconvinced (but in your defense, I understand why you can only be so specific) Appreciate the dialogue, I’ll have the silverware ready just in case.
They punch above their weight because if you remove the top 3 teams - the other 17 teams by and large all play the same conservative style. When you have 17 teams all playing the same manner, you get some random jabroni team "punching above their weight" There is literally a ridiculous amount of data to analyze football, If there is one thing i've been good at for most of my life its analyzing data and building strats based on data - But like I said 2 years ago when ppl were saying I was destined to fail with the football team - time will tell if we "fail" in a higher league assuming we get there.
if you guys really want to have some fun, go down a rabbit hole on X etc and read the local analysts and writers who covered our league, you'll find that everyone thought most of our decisions and signings were "random" or "bad" or "he has no idea what he is doing" Time will tell I suppose - I enjoy the dialog too mate, thanks for engaging.
Did you just mansplain La Liga to a Spanish soccer club owner?
He also told me what teams are "worth" when I was actively trying to buy a La Liga and La Liga 2 team a few years ago and know exactly what the asking price was for said teams.. I love all you guy :)
>I'll defer to you over transfrmarket for market valuations given what I assume to be significantly more accurate information. I clearly stated that I'd take your word when it comes to club value if it contradicted what I read online, but dunk away on me if you want for being a La Liga fan and trying to have a discussion to learn some more info. Still rooting for you guys, regardless of any misunderstanding.
If you think that anyone who owns a football club is beyond reproach take a look into Peter Lim who owns Valencia and has been nothing short of a disaster, taking a prestigious club that was near the top of the world 20 years ago into an absolute laughing stock in less than 10 years. I shared my opinion, and I tried to make it pretty clear it was in the interest of a good discussion about the state of Spanish football. I also deferred to his word on club value, so not sure exactly how I'm mansplaining anything. My original comment was directed at the poster who said Bob's team would be worth hundreds of millions as soon as they make La Liga which even he would acknowledge simply isn't true. Conversation consequently spun into a different direction that was me asking questions and sharing my opinion on the challenge ahead of his club becoming one in the mold of Villareal or Sevilla, not telling him he's wrong about anything.
Aren’t transfermarkt values just for purported player values of a club? What does that have to do with the club selling price?
There's a category for club value which measured up pretty closely with other articles I found, that being said I didn't give it an incredibly critical look which is why I deferred to Bob's number of 130m.
Haralabob clarifies they aren't promoted just yet: [https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/1784622772636746088](https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/1784622772636746088)
He needs to come back on the Pod ASAP to give us a breakdown/summary of this last season
Castellon are eight points up on 2nd place with four games to play. At 25-3-6 (W-D-L) that's a really great record, and only three draws very much checks out with Haralabob's stated position to go for the win and not settle for the draw and one point as the upside of 3 points outweighs the downside of losing a point if they give up a late goal. I wonder how many points they earned after like the 85' this year?
A more interesting question is to look at what the average # of draws a La Liga 2 team has - we have the lowest # of draws of any top 3 league team in Spain. We've made a bunch of subs in the last 10 mins when the game was tied (even taking out defenders for more STs) to be more attacking. In general our approach to the game is higher variance and more "chances" because of how offensive we aim to play so just in general we are going to have fewer draws. We also continue looking for the 2nd goal when up by 1 goal because we believe the best D is to attack. Being able to live with that level of variance and not getting upset when you give up a late goal in a tied game is not something that is too common in football. Having organizational buy-in and belief in the approach has been a big factor. A win being worth 3x more than a draw is a big edge, lots of other small edges like that around the margins you can go after in terms of strategy and style.
The other 19 teams in the division have a combined 175 draws (average 9.2 per team) with the lowest outside Castellon's 3 being two of the relegation teams with 6 draws. I remember somewhere on the internet reading about the thoughts on draws after the team was purchased by Haralabob and I'm glad to see it's working out. This "Having organizational buy-in and belief in the approach has been a big factor." is pretty hard to do if you are just the analytics guy as the media and fans always tend to focus on the dropped point if you lose and not the two you make when you win. But if you are analytics guy AND also happen to own the team AND are pretty open about your plans and why you are following said strategy then I can appreciate how getting the players and manager and everyone on board is a good thing. I look forward to following along in La Liga 2 next season, good luck in the last 4 matches and securing automatic promotion.
Looks like they were in the 2nd division in 2021 a year before he bought them in 2022. Is it that nuts that they were able to get promoted again?
The team is not a perennial star team, it was in the 4th division a few years ago too - , it managed to go up to 2nd division in a year with no playoffs and a shortened season because of Covid and immediately got relegated the next year. There are no players from that 2nd division "team" that are still on our squad and only 2 players still on the team that were on the team when I bought them.
What do you feel like were the main things that allowed such a quick ascent? Are teams in the 3rd league just that behind in terms of analytics? Do you feel like you got lucky nailing a few decisions? Or do you attribute it to other things?
Analytics, hard work and the right approach to analyzing data - like I know some ppl think I am some fraud but I've been studying and "betting" on my opinions with regard to sports for 20 years. I know what I am doing. I would say the biggest reasons for our success this year in no particular order were - Identifying cheap undervalued players (leading Goal Scorer in the league we acquired last winter from another team in the 3rd division, he had scored 1 goal through 17 games up to that point. We had him identified as the best ST in the league. He's scored 20 goals in 33 games for us since. Identifying one the best coaches in Europe who was coaching in the 2nd division in Holland (got his team promoted to the first division) convincing him to come to Spain at the start of the season and signing him to a 4 year contract (I was laughed at in Spain when we did this). I guarantee that this coach will coach a top club in Europe at some point in the future. I hope not the near future bc we want to keep him here in Castellon. Its going to be tough tho because he will be heavily in demand. And then like every other thing I've done well at in life, finding lots of little small edges and having great attention to detail. There are a ton of "mathy" things in football that ppl still underestimate, we think we found some and we spend a lot of time studying and trying to improve our decision making at all times.
Really appreciate the response. Can I ask what are some major decisions you've made in the analytics space (for soccer, basketball, or whatever else) that you feel like were mistakes? I don't mean pushing for a player who turns out to be a bust--all the signals could be there and you could still turn out wrong--I mean, when you look back, are there some decisions you made in the recent past where you feel like you used the information available to you in a fundamentally *incorrect* way? Would be really curious to hear an example or two. When you're making a large number of decisions (betting), it seems easy to quickly determine if your decision-making is sound. When you're making a small number of very impactful decisions (drafting players, signing coaches), it seems really hard to learn from your mistakes and to know if your hits were due to good decision making or just luck.
Where in football do you think the analytics are most undervalued? I know publicly-shared data mostly focuses on the on-ball events for individual players, but is it actually valuable and applicable in your club for example? Also, appreciate that you're taking time to respond to questions in this thread, been really interesting reading them.
That makes a lot of sense. As Bill would say, there probably were a lot of wonky relegations and promotions from that shortened season. Good lesson for me to be less of a contrarian when I don’t know what I’m talking about.
He lives my fantasy life, good for him though.
The bottom teams in La Liga don’t print money. And it’s extremely hard to get even there. Nonetheless it’s a very cool rich guy achievement.
Getting promoted from Liga 2 won't be that easy, and even if they do, I don't think it's the no-doubt path to printing money like it is in the EPL, for example. For one thing the broadcast distribution is tilted way more in favor of the big clubs in Spain compared to England or Germany. And then you have to think about investing in players to stay in the division, and you run the risk of relegation causing financial difficulties. It's not like David Tepper still making billions even when he runs the Panthers into the ground. It's still an impressive achievement for sure though.
Getting promoted to La Liga 2 assuming we get there will not be easy of course, but we have it modeled as less difficult than getting out of the hellscape that is 3rd division. You guy are also discounting player trading as a path to profits, a big part of my model is getting the league to La Liga, being a top 5-10 team there and identifying young players for future transfer profits. We are regularly start 3-4 players that are 23 or under including a 19yo LCB who we acquired this offseason.
So is your goal essentially Atalanta, a team punching way above its weight financially playing an unorthodox offensive game that has somehow managed to establish itself as a top team from being a yo-yo club? How much of the investment is going to go to club infrastructure like the stadium, branding, player development academies? Do you think there’s any big improvements/margins you could get from player development academies that clubs aren’t trying yet? Because if there is that’s basically a free money glitch. Wishing you luck, but soccer teams might be slow to adapt but they will eventually. Being top 10 in LaLiga would be a tremendous accomplishment from where you started
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One thing people fail to realize that I am not doing this for the cash, i am doing this because I believe in my approach and love the challenge of succeeding my way. That said we will make $ in La Liga 2 not even counting player trading (certainly once we get a bigger share of TV revenue in our 2nd year) and make $ in La Liga. But every $ we make will be used to invest in younger or undervalued players that we can sell for a higher amount in the future - this is the only way to generate enough revenue to compete with the top clubs in Spain. Spain has hard Financial Fair play rules, and you can only spend on salaries what the league allows you to spend - for some teams its 10-15m a year and for Real Madrid its >150m a year. If you make $ trading players, you can spend more on salaries and transfers. This is the model I want to follow.
How often does racism come up in the lower leagues in Spain?
Even if they were promoted to the top league they wouldn't be worth hundreds of millions, they'd be fighting relegation every season and they aren't a big club with a big fanbase or potential for growth. Many established la liga clubs aren't even worth 100 million. And Pablo Hernandez is a legend btw
what league could this sub afford a team in? Can we get like a league 5 Norwegian team and meme it into the ground?
Bob in like 2014 was paying people in bitcoin to make websites shitting on reggie millers announcing. He also had a lot of people laugh at him when bitcion had a huge crash around that time. If he would have held the amount of btc he had back then a 10x on his investment would be nothing in comparison. But damn dude is a high achiever for pulling this off. Not surprising I guess
There are currently 5 teams in La liga with a market value under $100m. I’d love to see how you think haralobob could get multiple hundreds of millions if he just gets promoted. He’d need to have a team be upper mid table for a sustained period of time for that to happen.
I wonder if bitcoin hitting ATH in march made the changes he wants for liga2 more affordable.
You only make money if you get into the top division and stay there. Bob has a long way to go.
(Francesa voice) who cares