Issue 6 - The Delayed Issue

I know what you’re thinking. Where has he been? Turns out, there’s been too much football over the past month and there’s not been a natural break point to carry out some further analysis.

Fear not, this is certainly not a dead project and with European and domestic action taking place over the past few weeks, goal averages and co-efficients have been altered to add further dynamism to The Goal Markets.

A Quick Recap

To refresh your memory or educate those who are reading the concept for the first time, the concept is a currency exchange rate that is linked from one league to another and highlights the differences in goals across the continent.

With that in mind, here are the current exchange rates as of 4th April 2025:

If we consider the Premier League as the gold standard of goals, then a converted strike in either La Liga or Bundesliga is worth 80% of one scored in the top tier of English football.

The pinnacle of Spanish and German football ranking just a touch higher than Serie A at 72% market value followed by Ligue 1 and the Eredivisie which are hovering round the two/thirds marker.

While for a number of outliers, a goal in the Liga Portugal from somebody such as Viktor Gyokeres is worth just under 60% and a goal in the Scottish Premiership is less worth than 40%.

The Top 20

What does that mean though when we look at the top forwards across Europe?

It’s a Premier League lockout for the top three and also four of the top five goalscorers after being put through the exchange rate sit in the top five - the only outlier being Robert Lewandowski and his 25 goals for Barcelona being worth 19.85 in “real terms”

Lewandowksi the top representative of La Liga, Harry Kane at his former club Bayern Munich flying the flag for the Bundesliga with 22 league goals currently worth an overall value of 17.15.

Compare that to Ousmane Dembele who is just one goal worse off having scored 21 for PSG to date and due to the lesser currency conversion, those 21 goals are only worth 14.17 Premier League goals by comparison.

While Mateo Retegui may have scored two more goals than Alexsander Isak (22 vs 20) but the Italian’s output is just over four goals less than the Swede’s productivity in Premier League terms.

This should start to give a sense of value as we approach the business end of the season but now it is time to put this concept to business and look at it from a historic standpoint and to do so, we are going to use a certain Newcastle talisman.

Welcome Mr Isak

If you have been living under a rock these past few weeks, you would be unaware that Newcastle finally ended their 70-year trophy drought and a considerable reason for this are the goals of Alexsander Isak.

His goal at Wembley may not have counted towards the tally above but it has reportedly increased interest from both Liverpool and Arsenal and if they are to prise him away from Tyneside, a fee of anything over £150m seems to be talking point.

That is what might happen, lets have a look at what has happened and that is a move from Real Sociedad at the beginning of the 2022/23 season. A move that was worth £63 million back in August 2022.

If we use the same measure to calculate a 2022/23 exchange rate from La Liga to the Premier League, a goal in Spain would be worth 0.818 in England and on the basis of what Isak produced for the San Sebastian-based club the season before, the target would be as follows:

Real Sociedad 21/22 League Goals - 6
Exchange Rate - 0.818
Newcastle 22/23 Target - 4.90
Newcastle 22/23 Goals - 10
Cleared Benchmark by 5.10 goals.

As we can see Isak had quite a simple benchmark to clear after a less than stellar 2021/22 season for Real Sociedad and with such a small sample to work from, the findings of whether this is a worthwhile move are somewhat inconclusive.

Time To Expand

What happens we look at Isak’s overall output for Real Sociedad and extrapolate the numbers?

If we look at Isak’s 24 goals in 70 La Liga appearances, that works out at roughly 13 goals per season (76 games in total)

Therefore, if we apply that measure of 13 goals as the benchmark:

Real Sociedad Season Ratiod Goals - 13
Exchange Rate - 0.818
Newcastle 22/23 Target - 10.63
Newcastle 22/23 Goals - 10
Missed Benchmark by 0.63 goals.

The underlying numbers would suggest that Isak fell short in terms of output but then you have to remember two things. First, those 10 goals played a considerable part in Newcastle reaching the Champions League in 2023/24. Second, he has scored 41 goals in 56 league appearances since the beginning of 2023/24.

If you were to build an element of margin, you could argue Isak was break even from his output at Real Sociedad career and what was expected at Newcastle in his first season but since then, he has exceeded that output and that £63 million looks like being money well spent.

The Admin Bit

This concept is far from the finished article and this is where your feedback comes in very handy.

Any suggestions to the modelling or players you want to see put through the currency converter, please let me know in the comments or by emailing me at:

[email protected]

Also, if this has grabbed your interest enough to tell a friend or two about the concept - word of mouth is much better than me putting even more money in Elon Musk’s pocket.

Thanks

Dan