Galaxy

13 Apr 2015

Real Madrid favourites to win this season's Champions League trophy- study

Real Madrid are the most likely to win this season's Champions League trophy, according to a study by the CIES Football Observatory.
The study looked at three particular performance indicators -- Experience; Squad Stability and Transfer Policy -- before comparing with those of the last five winners: Inter Milan (2010); Barcelona (2011); Chelsea (2012); Bayern (2013); Real Madrid (2014).
In the Experience category, the last five previous winners gathered players with a total experience of 865 matches in the competition. This season, only three out of the eight teams that qualified for the quarterfinals in the 2014-15 edition have squads with such experience: Bayern Munich (932), Real Madrid (911) and Barcelona (864), with PSG the next at 569.
Madrid (312) and Barcelona (311) also score highly when the number of international players who have played for their countries are taken into consideration, with Bayern's 244 games coming some way off the previous five winners' score of 293.
In Squad Stability, the last five Champions League winners had players who were present in the first team squad for 3.5 years on average. Again, only Barcelona (4.00) and Real Madrid (3.83) came in over the average, while while Bayern (3.41) and Juventus (3.15) both came close.
To measure the level of cohesion, the study found that, on average, the last five Champions League winners had to incorporate an average of 2.6 new players. The fact that Madrid scored (2.08) highlights more stability than FC Porto who finished top in this category with 4.89 new players.
Finally, the ability of clubs to assemble experienced and stable squads also depends on financial clout. Only three of the teams qualified for the quarterfinals -- Real Madrid (€590 million), PSG (€443m) and Barcelona (€336m) -- have invested more than the €307m average transfer expenditure of the last five winners.
Clearly, the success of clubs like Dortmund who spent €56m and reached the final in 2012-13 means that there are exceptions, but money talks and of the three categories investigated by the study, Real Madrid come out on top to defend their title.

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