October 26 – Bayern Munich chief executive Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said at the weekend that his club would not “want to bring some 10- or 11-year-old to Munich like the English do…You could almost speak of kidnapping with them and I would have moral reservations about that.” For Bayern it seems that recruitment begins at 24.8 years old.
That is the average at which Bayern squad members are recruited, according to CIES Football Observatory data. This ranks them 45th in terms of ‘youngest’ recruiting clubs out of 98 clubs across Europe’s big five league and 12th in Germany.
Top of the recruitment ranking (with the lowest recruitment age) is Real Madrid who on average recruit players aged 22.5 years old.
CIES notes that “the best clubs focus their recruitment on younger players than less competitive teams. In the top five positions of clubs whose transfer policy is the most centered on young footballers are four Champions League participating teams: Real Madrid, Leverkusen, Dortmund and Tottenham.”
Notably new German challengers Leipzig are second in the table, suggesting that they are looking to the future, while Bayern’s thinking may perhaps be a little rooted in the club’s phenomenally successful past.
Looking at the top 10 recruiting clubs in the table there are four German (Leipzig, Leverkusen, Dortmund, Mainz) and four English teams (Tottenham, Bournemouth, Liverpool, Manchester United).
The club that is bottom of the table recruiting the oldest players in Cagliari with an average age of 28.52.
While these are the headlines of the report, CIES has a more detailed analysis of recruitment strategies at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/mr/mr18/en/
Average age at recruitment, Big-5 leagues (at October 2016)
Source: CIES Football Observatory
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