Cheers!

Dominic

@Phil, Thanks for your interesting comment, always nice to hear from you. As you mentioned, I agree that the techno start up market is a great example for testing the importance of connections. I think one of the best example is the creation of the Altimeter Group, formed by Charlene Li, who also includes as partners former Forester’s colleagues Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang. From another point of view, strong connections (ties) reduce uncertainty and may help someone to estimate the future profits/losses of a start up. Furthermore, since the techno start up market can be considered as a small world, someone’s reputation is an important component to decide whether or not to join this person in a specific start up.

I agree with you on the fact that soccer and hockey have different realities in transfer matters. I would just like to build on that comment, as I think that even though members of the organization do not hold such an important value in attracting players, they can still prove decisive.

First of all, the context is different: no salary cap enables the richest and most prestigious clubs to attract several top-performers who worry little about who’s on the team. I’m referring to clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Chelsea, even if it can be argued that seeing an army of Galacticos in Madrid is what made Ribery plea for a move from Munich to Spain.

However, it’s interesting to see that the role of money may not be so important, as a club like Manchester City was able to attract Robinho in 2008 but had to face harsh refusals from Kaka and Messi. Still, in 2009 they pulled both Kolo Toure and Adebayor away from Arsenal, Tevez from Manchester United, Barry from Aston Villa, and Santa Cruz from Blackburn (the first three clubs are engaged in European cups and have a more solid reputation/track record than Manchester City). The reasons behind these moves seem to be depending on the following 5 factors:
1- Money
2- Money
3- Money
4- Who else is making the move to that team
5- Other personal reasons (not enough field time in their team, lack of evolution, need for a new challenge, conflicts with former teammates/coaches…)

Of course, the official reason is always the “sportive challenge”, but having already signed some good players has definitely helped Manchester City more than their location, reputation, performance, or the lack of other offers that these players received.

Secondly, although members of soccer clubs are not as important as those in less individualistic sports, they can still prove decisive in some occasions. We can take two examples from this summer to illustrate this: a few days after Porto’s player Lisandro Lopez made a move to Lyon, his former teammate Aly Cissokho was announced in Milan AC. But while the discussions with the Italian club dragged on, Cissokho ended up landing in the Lyon St Exupery airport and signed a five-year contract with the French team.

So what happened? First, Lyon had made a 15 million euros offer to Porto, both club presidents had been in very good terms for several years, and Lopez called Cissokho to tell him that he was surprised to find “such a great club in such a nice city”. Interestingly enough, the two last factors are related to members of the club.

The second example is a bit more straightforward. Fernando Morientes, former Spain international and star scorer in several prestigious clubs (Real Madrid, Liverpool and Valence) was a free-agent. Even at 33, several teams were interested in signing such a player, were it only for the shirts he would sell and the influence he can have on teammates. He finally opted for Marseille, not so surprisingly. Indeed, Marseille’s coach, Didier Deschamps, coached Morientes in Monaco the year they made it to the Champions’ league final. Both men appreciate each other and know they can work together, that was enough for Deschamps to convince Morientes.

I’ve strayed a bit from the original topic but I like the idea of the value of members in an organization, and since we can even find examples in sports like soccer, I think this is a solid concept.

I just hope that it turns out better for Gomez and Gionta that it did for Selanne, Kariya and the Avalanche in 2003-2004…
( for those who want to know, Selanne and Kariya produced a grand total of 68 points that year, combined . Ouch !)

The terms of contracts in soccer are quite long, which gives less freedom to the players. Thus, they can change teams at the end of their contracts, and I think that factors 1 (money) and 4(reputation of the team) are more important (in Soccer), than the factor 5 (members of the organization).

The prestige of teams like Real Madrid and Manchester United (history, performance) does attract the best players in the world, but they don’t join the team only because of the other players. I think they join the team mainly because they have more opportunities to win.
Maybe soccer players have less power because the decisions are often taken by the owner of the club.