Transfers - which leagues translate well to PL football?

Pogue Mahone

Closet Gooner.
Joined
Feb 22, 2006
Messages
140,302
Location
"like a man in silk pyjamas shooting pigeons
For no particular reason (;)) I have been idly speculating on whether a central midfielder who is a big hit in Serie A might struggle to adapt to the higher tempo and more lenient refereeing in the Premier League.

Obviously, every United fan of a certain age will still have the mental scars of a Serie A genius midfielder who never quite cut it in over here. What about in general, though? What is the likelihood of a Serie A player adapting quickly to life at a PL club? How many player can redcafe come up with who were a success, first in Italy, then in England? I've a sneaking suspicion the ratio of flops to successes isn't very good.

Similarly, what about other leagues? There's a long list of ex La Liga players who have done well in the PL. My instinct is that they're a safer bet but I could be wrong. It might be just more of them coming over, in total.

Eriedivision players have a generally poor record (I think?) with Ruud and Suarez the exceptions that prove the rule.

Bundesliga players generally do quite well?

I'm probably making this all up. Help me out here...
 
I wouldn't say the league really matters.

It's more about how the player himself adapts to living in England. There's been loads of players who've flopped in England despite having loads of talent.
 
I doubt there's a rule either. People use Veron as an example of a player who couldn't cut it in the league having been a star in Serie A but he just didn't fit our system and then regressed at Chelsea. After coming back to Italy with Inter he wasn't that great either. Not many successful transfers from La Liga to PL lately though - Lamela and Osvaldo, two big deals of last season, have both struggled.

Plenty of successful transfers from Ligue 1 but the fact that Arsenal a few years back and Newcastle now almost exclusively sign players from there helps with the sheer size of French influx.
 
La Liga probably.

Successful transitions :

Juan Mata
David Silva
Pablo Zabaleta
David De Gea
Sergio Aguero
Alvaro Negredo
Cesar Azpelecueta (via Marseille)
Santiago Cazorla
Yaya Toure
Jesus Navas
Michu (had a poor sophomore season though)
Mikel Arteta
Xabi Alonso
Fernando Torres (initally)

Other leagues are all pretty hit and miss...
 
Sarni said:
I doubt there's a rule either. People use Veron as an example of a player who couldn't cut it in the league having been a star in Serie A but he just didn't fit our system and then regressed at Chelsea. After coming back to Italy with Inter he wasn't that great either. Not many successful transfers from La Liga to PL lately though - Lamela and Osvaldo, two big deals of last season, have both struggled.

Plenty of successful transfers from Ligue 1 but the fact that Arsenal a few years back and Newcastle now almost exclusively sign players from there helps with the sheer size of French influx.
Click to expand...

Presume you mean Serie A and was also thinking of those two when I made the thread. Also, Aquilani at Liverpool. Does seem to be a pattern of players who excel in Serie A not making the grade in th PL. Would love to be convinced otherwise, obviously. I'd need a few examples of players who succesfully made the transition though.
 
I guess it does depend on the player. Look at Kagawa his struggled to adjust while similar players in Mata and Silva are among the best in the league.
 
It depends entirely on the player and his new team, some players fail to adapt to a new team in the same league.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Presume you mean Serie A and was also thinking of those two when I made the thread. Also, Aquilani at Liverpool. Does seem to be a pattern of players who excel in Serie A not making the grade in th PL. Would love to be convinced otherwise, obviously. I'd need a few examples of players who succesfully made the transition though.
Click to expand...

Yes, indeed, I meant Serie A. Honestly I am finding it difficult right now to come up with an example of a Serie A based player making a successful transition to Premier League - the size of sample has been small lately and admittedly Serie A has gone down in terms of quality over the last few years.

La Liga players, Soldado aside, have been mostly excellent. Silva, Negredo and Mata have all done great and Navas has been good in patches too.
 
Sarni said:
Yes, indeed, I meant Serie A. Honestly I am finding it difficult right now to come up with an example of a Serie A based player making a successful transition to Premier League - the size of sample has been small lately and admittedly Serie A has gone down in terms of quality over the last few years.

La Liga players, Soldado aside, have been mostly excellent. Silva, Negredo and Mata have all done great and Navas has been good in patches too.
Click to expand...

Yeah, La Liga does seem a better bet. Morientes would be an unusual exception.

Just thought of another quality player who couldn't adapt from Italy to England - Andrei Shevchenko.

Hmmm...

:nervous:
 
Ballotelli came over and did well. Him being an absolute head case detracts from it, but on the pitch he was probably a success.
 
NinjaFletch said:
Ballotelli came over and did well. Him being an absolute head case detracts from it, but on the pitch he was probably a success.
Click to expand...

I don't think so. Wasn't partucularly prolific despite playing for a dominant team and never offers much more than goals anyway. A few impressive performances but an awful lot of dross. If his PL stint had been a success he wouldn't have left under such a cloud.

EDIT: Actually, probably had one good season. The other two are best forgotten about.
 
I think it's also the style of the player as well, as when considering Serie A for example, there will be "CM's from Serie A", that won't fit the typical bill, but it's a good idea for a thread, if you found perhaps a few variable (Playing Style/ League/ Age) and presented a few cases would be interested in the results..
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I don't think so. Wasn't partucularly prolific despite playing for a dominant team and never offers much more than goals anyway. A few impressive performances but an awful lot of dross. If his PL stint had been a success he wouldn't have left under such a cloud.

EDIT: Actually, probably had one good season. The other two are best forgotten about.
Click to expand...

Yeah. He had one good season which I think showed he didn't struggle with the league, he certainly had the quality and potential it make it here, it was the off field stuff which really stopped him from pushing on.
 
NinjaFletch said:
Yeah. He had one good season which I think showed he didn't struggle with the league, he certainly had the quality and potential it make it here, it was the off field stuff which really stopped him from pushing on.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. We'll put him in column A.

In column B so far we have Veron, Shevchenko, Aquilani, Lamela, Ozvaldo...

Bound to be a load of others I've missed out. Anyone?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Yeah, La Liga does seem a better bet. Morientes would be an unusual exception.

Just thought of another quality player who couldn't adapt from Italy to England - Andrei Shevchenko.

Hmmm...

:nervous:
Click to expand...

Morientes is a curious case because he wasn't that good at Madrid just before his departure on loan to Monaco, then absolutely fantastic for Monaco for a season, then back to the average level both at Liverpool and Valencia. Obviously he still did much better in Spain and France than England, both before and after his spell here.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Fair enough. We'll put him in column A.

In column B so far we have Veron, Shevchenko, Aquilani, Lamela, Ozvaldo...

Bound to be a load of others I've missed out. Anyone?
Click to expand...

Giaccherini has been average for Sunderland, Dossena terrible for Liverpool, Jovetic hasn't done a thing at City. Nastasic has been all right.
 
I dont think it matters what league a player comes from... i generally look at the mentality of a player. In Verons case i genuinley think it was 'right player - wrong time' Imagine if we signed a young Veron now... he would be absolutley what we need. I don't think Fergie knew how to use him in the midfield we had at the time... Kagawa likewise.
In saying that... players signed from Serie A tend to be hit and miss over here but there was a time not so long ago that Spanish players didn't do to well in England.. Raul Bravo, Counago, Albert Ferrer, Marcelino, Reyes, Nunez, Josemi, Hierro.... Its probably only in the last 5-6 years that Spanish players have excelled over here.
 
SiRed said:
I dont think it matters what league a player comes from... i generally look at the mentality of a player. In Verons case i genuinley think it was 'right player - wrong time' Imagine if we signed a young Veron now... he would be absolutley what we need. I don't think Fergie knew how to use him in the midfield we had at the time... Kagawa likewise.
In saying that... players signed from Serie A tend to be hit and miss over here but there was a time not so long ago that Spanish players didn't do to well in England.. Raul Bravo, Counago, Albert Ferrer, Marcelino, Reyes, Nunez, Josemi, Hierro.... Its probably only in the last 5-6 years that Spanish players have excelled over here.
Click to expand...

Raul Bravo and Nunez didn't do well anywhere, Hierro came here long after his prime, Reyes has gone downhill since his youth days - Arsenal and Benfica included.
 
Mutu also flopped, but then again, so did many of those who signed for Chelsea in those days. I've never rated Borini. Zola and Desailly were good, Di Canio too I'd say.

there are also some players who weren't that good in serie a before transfer, but became legendary players in premier league.
 
If you are going back as far as Veron (2001), then only a few years before were Henry, Zola and Bergkamp. More recently there have been few successes imported from Serie A, but the decline of Italian football is surely a considerable factor in this. The top Italians usually stay in Italy, and the calibre of foreigners playing in Italy has declined.

In Vidal's case he has only been with Juve three seasons, after an impressive four year spell in the Bundesliga. He shouldn't have too many problems adapting to the BPL.
 
Vidal has looked excellent playing for Leverkusen, Juventus and Chile. I wouldn't be worried about him failing to adapt.
 
No league translates well to another league that is simply lazy generalizing. It is all about the fact that if you make a transfer from a team which plays a different style than your own team the player may very well not be able to use his abilities as well as before and may perform at a much lower level. If you look at someone like Moura you see that he is as good and as big of a talent as he was when he moved to PSG, but Blanc uses his wingers as wide forwards who make off the ball runs towards the goal rather than wait out wide to receive the ball safely and then try to dribble past their opponents.

So a dribbling winger like Moura suffers whereas a Cavani and Lavezzi who lacks Moura's dribbling but instead has better off the ball runs shines. The managers will always take punts at players who plays in different styles than theirs as the majority of players will play in a style which isn't their own so just buying players who fit perfectly in to your side won't be possible.

Look at Kagawa who was outstanding for Dortmund as his great stamina was perfect for a pressing defense which made him look a monster and offensively he played centrally and Dortmund often attacks with a lot of space on the counter so making the playmaking passes is easier. At United he never looked the same player, which we would then blame the league change for but now with LVG here we suddenly have a team in the Premier League which will use a pressing defense which should suit him greatly, whether he plays or not is a different question.
 
Annahnomoss said:
No league translates well to another league that is simply lazy generalizing. It is all about the fact that if you make a transfer from a team which plays a different style than your own team the player may very well not be able to use his abilities as well as before and may perform at a much lower level. If you look at someone like Moura you see that he is as good and as big of a talent as he was when he moved to PSG, but Blanc uses his wingers as wide forwards who make off the ball runs towards the goal rather than wait out wide to receive the ball safely and then try to dribble past their opponents.

So a dribbling winger like Moura suffers whereas a Cavani and Lavezzi who lacks Moura's dribbling but instead has better off the ball runs shines. The managers will always take punts at players who plays in different styles than theirs as the majority of players will play in a style which isn't their own so just buying players who fit perfectly in to your side won't be possible.

Look at Kagawa who was outstanding for Dortmund as his great stamina was perfect for a pressing defense which made him look a monster and offensively he played centrally and Dortmund often attacks with a lot of space on the counter so making the playmaking passes is easier. At United he never looked the same player, which we would then blame the league change for but now with LVG here we suddenly have a team in the Premier League which will use a pressing defense which should suit him greatly, whether he plays or not is a different question.
Click to expand...

There's clearly a lot of important issues players face when changing teams.

This doesn't mean we can ignore the additional challenges they face when changing leagues. The differences in the football played in the various leagues means that these will not be the same for all transfers.
 
Some midfielders have done well in the Bundesliga and Serie A so they're probably not bad players. I'm a bit more nervous of players who've just done well in the present day Serie A, but maybe that just means I don't watch them play very often.

In terms of La Liga, the ones who move more or less are the same as they were. The top ones become top players here. The hit or miss ones stay hit or miss and generally answer the question, "but why didn't Madrid/Barca want them?" quite rapidly.

I don't know about Bundesliga players, is there a big enough sample size?
 
I reckon some Serie A midfielders would struggle. I've always said that Pogba wouldn't have been as successful (and might not have been successful at all) in a high-intensity two-man Manchester United midfield as he has been in a three-man midfield role where he can basically just sit deep, not moving too much, being the brains of the operation while the likes of Vidal and Marchisio do all the running.

Either of those two, however, or indeed anyone who plays that particular midfield role in Serie A (the 'regista behind two hard workers' model still being pretty common in Italy) would thrive in the PL. They have the work-rate, the committed attitude, and the flexibility that this league's best midfielders tend to exhibit.

As for the more laissez-faire referees, I imagine that would suit Vidal. He's a very aggressive tackler.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
There's clearly a lot of important issues players face when changing teams.

This doesn't mean we can ignore the additional challenges they face when changing leagues. The differences in the football played in the various leagues means that these will not be the same for all transfers.
Click to expand...

If you go from a team like Bayern to a team like Barcelona when they had Tito Vilanova in the side you'd have no issues at all changing league. The leagues being different in general is a truth, but its importance has been exaggerated a lot and every failed transfer is down to that in the Premier League.

I've never heard it being used by other leagues and their medias at all instead they focus on whether or not the player can adjust to his team which is by far the most important aspect of it all. If you join a top club who dominate almost all their games completely while the opponents play defensively and you've only played for teams where matches has been back and forth then you will have issues dealing with that, but it isn't about the league and rather about your own team.
 
Last edited:
Pogue Mahone said:
For no particular reason (;)) I have been idly speculating on whether a central midfielder who is a big hit in Serie A might struggle to adapt to the higher tempo and more lenient refereeing in the Premier League.

Obviously, every United fan of a certain age will still have the mental scars of a Serie A genius midfielder who never quite cut it in over here. What about in general, though? What is the likelihood of a Serie A player adapting quickly to life at a PL club? How many player can redcafe come up with who were a success, first in Italy, then in England? I've a sneaking suspicion the ratio of flops to successes isn't very good.

Similarly, what about other leagues? There's a long list of ex La Liga players who have done well in the PL. My instinct is that they're a safer bet but I could be wrong. It might be just more of them coming over, in total.

Eriedivision players have a generally poor record (I think?) with Ruud and Suarez the exceptions that prove the rule.

Bundesliga players generally do quite well?

I'm probably making this all up. Help me out here...
Click to expand...

You missed out a LOT of good dutch transitions there.

Bergkamp
RVP
Van Der Saar (?)
Gullit
Jaap Stam
Overmars
 
serie a is an interesting case with their late bloomers and just old players still performing at their best or very close to that. there have been several cases of really old strikers who just kept scoring even after they turned 34 or 35., like Klose, Di Vaio, Tavano, Toni, Di Natale, Miccoli, Rocchi, even Totti... I can't even remember one 34-35 year old striker still playing in premier league, let alone good one.
 
jojojo said:
I don't know about Bundesliga players, is there a big enough sample size?
Click to expand...

Well lets take a look at the (more or less significant) transfers coming from the Bundesliga in the EPL in the last 5 years:

Edin Dzeko -> City - did well
Steven Pienaar -> Everton - did well
Per Mertesacker -> Arsenal - did very well
Lukas Podolski -> Arsenal - decent
Shinji Kagawa -> United - decent (at least in the 1st season)
Marko Marin -> Chelsea - lol
Nick Proschwitz -> Hull - can´t judge
Samed Yesil -> Liverpool - did not play enough / injured
Andre Schürrle -> Chelsea - did well (at least better than pretty much everyone expected)
Marko Arnautovic -> Stoke - decent
Demba Ba -> West Ham -> did very well

I did not include loan deals in this list, because outside Luuk De Jong, who was shit in the Bundesliga and continued to be shit for Newcastle there are not really any significant ones in my memory. Well there is also Kevin De Bruyne, who did an amazing job at Bremen and was according to Mourinho a big part in his plans for Chelsea only to be shipped off half a year later back to Germany (feck you Jose, btw).

Overall, it is surely not a hell lot of players, but it is increasing, which is logical given the rise of general quality in the Bundesliga. All in all the transitions worked out pretty well I would say, if the players could actually properly play football, which can´t be said about Marin. To this day one of the most bizarre transfers I have ever witnessed.

I do also agree with the before mentioned statement about the differences of play styles, though, especially if the differences are very obvious. This was for example in Kagawa´s case a way bigger decider than the different league.
 
Can Vieira be considered one for Column A from Serie A? A long time ago and he only made two appearances for Milan, so its borderline. I'm not sure which column ol' Mickey Silvestre should be filed in...

EDIT: Silvestre was a success actually, a pretty decent player for us for awhile.
 
Angelinho said:
If you are going back as far as Veron (2001), then only a few years before were Henry, Zola and Bergkamp. More recently there have been few successes imported from Serie A, but the decline of Italian football is surely a considerable factor in this. The top Italians usually stay in Italy, and the calibre of foreigners playing in Italy has declined.

In Vidal's case he has only been with Juve three seasons, after an impressive four year spell in the Bundesliga. He shouldn't have too many problems adapting to the BPL.
Click to expand...
That's a decent point. It's only fair if we're factoring in the likes of Shevchenko and even Veron that they never recaptured the same heights post-England, therefore giving the impression they were already on the slide by the time they came over. In those instances it's less a question of league and more about declining quality (usually physicality, Veron said he didn't get a good pre-season and wasn't in great condition at United / Shevchenko was running out of gas).
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Good. Some more names for Column A. Thierry Henry too.
Click to expand...

Funny enough, both of them (Henry and Bergkamp) were considered flops in Italy.

How about Ravanelli? He came towards the end of his career and did pretty okay, considering he wasn't playing for one of the bigger sides in the premier league.
 
Coutinho flopped at Inter before shining at Liverpool. Nastasic demonstrated talent at Fiorentina and became a regular at City. Chico Flores was a big flop at Genoa and is a regular at Swansea.

Players like Balotelli, Osvaldo and Aquilani were nutcases/made of glass before going to England and continued being so. Giaccherini played his best football for relegation battling Cesena and was never more than a useful bench player for Juventus. There's a reason they were all sold to England - no Italian side would pay as much for those players.

Osvaldo was the Italian Andy Carroll. A decent season for Roma and Espanyol and a bunch of fights means you're overpaying for a decent player who gets into fights. He has been loaned out to Juventus, a much better side, scoring a staggering 1 in 11.

Aquilani couldn't make it at Juventus or Milan after playing for Liverpool.

Only Lamela has been a true big money flop the past three years.
 
Nedved said:
Only Lamela has been a true big money flop the past three years.
Click to expand...

Jovetic was disappointing too so far, but ok he had tons of injuries and I think both still have a chance to shine in their upcoming season. They had bad luck in their first season here, but both are talented for sure.

Rest is true, most players were not that great at all, Veron and Schevchenko were the 2 big money flops. But both already got a litte bit old and none of them was a good fit in the formation of their teams.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.