Let’s take a brief trip back to the 2019/20 season (sorry, Toulouse fans!).
As part of the world being thrown into disarray by the global pandemic, Ligue 1 finished 10 games early for all teams except PSG and Strasbourg, for whom it finished 11 games prematurely.
TFC ended up rock bottom of France’s top flight that term, but they can’t place too much blame on the prematurely curtailed season, as they sat a whopping 14 points from safety at the time the call was made to stop the campaign.
It had been a truly disastrous campaign for Le Téfécé that they will not want to relive (again, sorry for doing that to you, Toulouse fans).
On the bright side, this level of trouble didn’t last long for the Occitanie capital club.
They weren’t immediately promoted back to Ligue 1, but they weren’t far off at the first time of asking, finishing third.
TFC just needed one more attempt to return to the top flight, earning promotion as Ligue 2 winners in the 2021/22 season.
This Ligue 1 return was led by manager Philippe Montanier, president Damien Comolli and owners RedBird — a New York-based investment firm with ties to EPL giants Liverpool.
RedBird Capital Partners reportedly paid just €20 million to buy Toulouse following their 2020 relegation amid the pandemic.
On their Toulouse purchase, they promised to return the club to Ligue 1, which they quickly delivered on.
This term, with four teams set to drop out of Ligue 1, Toulouse are sitting quite safely in 12th place, with a Coupe de France final versus 16th-placed Nantes just around the corner at the time of writing this piece.
In our article, we’ll provide some data analysis of Toulouse’s ascent back to Ligue 1, using some data and statistics to share analysis of Le Téfécé’s RedBird recovery.
We will compare the three ‘RedBird seasons’ (2020/21 – 2022/23) with the three seasons prior to RedBird (2017/18 – 2019/20) in terms of squad composition, transfer market activity and use of the academy to try and show clearly what has and hasn’t changed in this time.
Toulouse Squad composition
Last year, when discussing Toulouse’s approach in the transfer market with L’Équipe, Comolli detailed that TFC “rarely take players over 25” into account, preferring to scout younger talents.
This may have had an effect on their average squad age, seen in figure 1, which immediately dropped from 28.2 to 26.2 following RedBird’s takeover — and has remained at about that level since (26.2 in 2021/22 and 26.3 in 2022/23).
While the drop in age was sharp following RedBird’s arrival at Stadium TFC, it is worth noting that this occurred at a time when the average squad age across Ligue 1 as a whole was also decreasing, with trends shifting towards younger squads.
This is why, despite having a younger squad in 2022/23 (26.3) than they did in 2019/20 (28.2), they had the 10th-youngest squad in France’s top flight in 2022/23, but the fourth-youngest squad in 2019/20.
So, it’s less innovation and differentiating themselves from the pack in this regard and more keeping up with current trends that I’ve seen Toulouse’s average squad age fall as dramatically as it has since RedBird took charge.
Nevertheless, this approach is important to note when discussing TFC’s recent success, especially when examining their approach in the transfer market, as we’ll do now in the next section of our analysis.
Toulouse Transfer market activity
TFC president Comolli had previously worked as sporting director of Fenerbahçe, Liverpool and Saint-Étienne — the latter twice — as well as having been ‘Head of Football Operations’ at Tottenham Hotspur.
The 50-year-old has an extensive background in recruitment, with this having been a major part of his previous roles in the game.
As a result, it won’t come as a massive surprise that transfer market activity is one of the key areas we’ll be discussing in this piece analysing Toulouse’s revival under RedBird and Comolli.
Firstly, as figure 2 shows, Toulouse have indeed made more signings in the RedBird years than they did in the preceding three years.
However, RedBird’s three years have taken place within the context of 2020/21 — the first season after relegation; 2021/22 — pushing for promotion; 2022/23 — the first season back in Ligue 1.
This has clearly been a turbulent time when you’d expect a higher squad turnover.
As a result, it’s definitely not a direct comparison in terms of numbers between the two seasons.
Toulouse’s transfer spending, though, has dropped for this period overall.
Again, with them having been in Ligue 2 for two of these three seasons, that won’t come as a massive surprise, and the 2022/23 campaign in which they’ve returned to Ligue 1 is the only one of the last six seasons when TFC have made a net transfer loss (-€3m) for the season.
Looking at expenditure only, they were still the second-highest spenders in Ligue 2 in 2020/21 and the highest spenders in Ligue 2 in 2021/22, for reference.
In terms of transfers out, TFC has sold slightly fewer players in recent years than it did just before RedBird’s takeover, but the numbers are quite similar (29 from 2017/18 to 2019/20, 27 from 2020/21 to 2022/23).
Looking at it in terms of finances, then, Toulouse have received slightly less, overall, in the last three years than they did in the three years preceding that — again, the relegation will be an important factor to bear in mind in this regard — but they’re still well in an overall transfer profit for the RedBird years, a continuous trend from their pre-RedBird days.
Overall, they spent €35.95m from 2017/18 to 2019/20, while they received €65.65m during this period, resulting in a transfer balance of €29.7m.
In the RedBird years, Toulouse have spent €22.24m, received €48.15m and ended up with a transfer balance of €25.91m for that time — just a few million less than their transfer balance for the three years preceding RedBird’s takeover.
While there doesn’t seem to be too much disparity in terms of the number of transfers and the amount of money spent in the RedBird years versus the pre-RedBird years, there’s obviously been a big difference in terms of success.
In the aforementioned interview last year with L’Équipe, Comolli gave a bit of insight into TFC’s recruitment process, explaining that his club: “have more than 40,000 players in the archive… We buy data, but we process it with our own algorithms to make it into exclusive statistics”.
He went on to state he opted to work with RedBird because of his preference for this recruitment approach.
So, Toulouse have evidently been looking at players through a different lens in recent years in order to find the best fit for their club while getting value for money.
This has seen them shopping in different markets compared to the pre-RedBird days.
From 2017/18 to 2019/20, nine of their 17 signings were brought in from another French club, with two coming from England, one from Russia, and one each from Greece, Norway, Japan, Belgium, and Türkiye, respectively.
From 2020/21 to 2022/23, Toulouse have spread their wings more, making just four of their 26 permanent signings from other French clubs.
Their home country has still been their biggest market, but they’ve found greater value elsewhere for the quality of players.
This has seen them bring in three players from Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands, respectively; two players from Belgium; and one player each from Poland, Switzerland, Chile, Slovakia, Japan, Denmark, the United States, Austria, Finland, Bulgaria, and England.
The likes of Stijn Spierings (€500k from Levski Sofia), Branco van den Boomen (€350k from De Graafschap), Rasmus Nicolaisen (€538k from Midtjylland) and Warren Kamanzi (€600k from Tromsø) all represent excellent value for quality from Toulouse’s transfer activity under RedBird.
Even a couple of their bigger transfers this season — Thijs Dallinga (€2.5m from Excelsior) and Zakaria Aboukhlal (€2m from AZ Alkmaar) represent excellent value, with both attackers currently valued at €7m by Transfermarkt after Dallinga has scored 16 goals and made three assists in all competitions this season and Aboukhlal has scored 12 and assisted five in all competitions this term.
So, it’s clear that Le Téfécé’s use of data has been logical and practical, with their algorithms and custom metrics, as detailed by Comolli, evidently helping them unearth gems that fit their system and deliver on the pitch at a level beyond what they paid for, based on the market rate.
Use of the academy
Toulouse’s academy has always been one of the most effective breeding grounds for professional footballers not just in France, but in all of Europe.
In a post from CIES football observatory from 2019, just 16 clubs from Europe’s top-five leagues were ranked above Toulouse in terms of their ability to produce professional footballers.
Their academy was placed on par with that of Bayern Munich, Tottenham Hotspur and Sevilla, to name a few, and above the likes of Milan, Internazionale, Roma, Borussia Dortmund and Ajax, among many others.
This ranking was based on the number of professional footballers active in one of Europe’s top-five leagues and produced by each club’s academy.
In order to qualify as a ‘training club’ for a player, the player would have to have spent at least three seasons playing for the club between the ages of 15 and 21.
This was in 2019, remember, so just before RedBird acquired TFC.
The fact they bought a club with such a rich resource as this academy reportedly for just €20m represents excellent business.
It won’t come as a surprise that RedBird have made use of this resource in several ways since taking over at Stadium TFC.
Firstly, we’ve always seen club-trained players feature quite heavily for Le Téfécé but there has been an increase in the last three years compared to the previous three years, as shown in figure 6.
The number of minutes played by club-trained players increased in 2020/21 — their first season after relegation — and has remained above prior levels in the two seasons since then as well.
In terms of transfer activity involving club-trained players, two fewer club-trained players (eight) have been sold by TFC in the last three years compared to the three years before (10).
This equals 29.6% of Toulouse’s player sales in the last three years compared with 34.5% for the preceding three years.
While we’ve seen a slight decline in Toulouse’s club-trained player sales during this period, it’s not a drastic difference and does not indicate a major change in approach as of yet.
Our final figure, Figure 8, shows the transfer fees recouped through the sales of Toulouse’s academy graduates over the last six seasons.
The 2018/19 season is a major outlier here as they received a hefty €34m from sales of academy graduates.
This was a result of Issa Diop’s €25m move to West Ham United, Alban Lafont’s €8m switch to Fiorentina and Jean-Clair Todibo’s €1m transfer to Barcelona.
However, despite this hefty income falling in the pre-RedBird seasons, Toulouse have still made more from sales of academy graduates in the RedBird era (€38m) than they did in the pre-RedBird era (€35.65m).
Furthermore, this equals 78.9% of their overall transfer income in the RedBird era arriving via sales of academy graduates versus 54.3% in the pre-RedBird era.
Overall, in the last three seasons, Toulouse have evidently tried to give a platform to their academy graduates and allow them to shine.
This has seen the likes of Manu Koné (€9m to Borussia Mönchengladbach), Amine Adli (€7.5m to Bayer Leverkusen), Bafodé Diakité (€3m to Lille) and Nathan Ngoumou (€8m to Borussia Mönchengladbach) all make enough of an impression for Le Téfécé’s first team that they secured big moves to major clubs from Europe’s top-five leagues after coming through Toulouse’s academy.
Conclusion
Comolli has stated that in the future, he sees the club moving away from the player-trading model, which will likely enable Toulouse to retain their major academy talents for longer as they strive to compete at a higher level moving forward.
Achieving UEFA Europa League qualification by winning the Coupe de France (the final is yet to be played at the time of writing) would be one way of incentivising their top academy talents to remain at Stadium TFC for longer, allowing Toulouse to reap the rewards of their top talent production on the pitch and not just on the balance sheet.
This may also help Toulouse create greater squad harmony by keeping a group of players together for longer and requiring less squad turnover.
Could that be what comes next in their RedBird journey?
In any event, it’s clear that RedBird’s approach with Toulouse has been successful thus far in helping them to turn around their fortunes following a devastating relegation in 2019/20 through an intelligent approach in the transfer market and good use of the club’s highly impressive academy resources.
