Analýza trhu fotbalových přestupů

The bachelor thesis deals with the international football transfer market, specifically the migration of players to the elite group of the top seven national league systems in the world. The main objective is to analyse and predict the career trajectories of players immediately following their first recorded international transfer. For this purpose, an extensive dataset containing over 70,000 transfer records from the years 2009 to 2021 was utilized. The methodological framework of the thesis is built on network analysis, which visualizes the market. To gain a deeper understanding of network relationships, the study subsequently applied the aggregation of career trajectories by country (to evaluate whether a player would return to their country of origin in the next step or move elsewhere) and stochastic modelling using second-order Markov chains, whose contribution was validated by the Likelihood Ratio test, the Bayesian Information Criterion, and out-of-sample testing. Among the key findings of the thesis is the fact that the probability of a direct return differs significantly depending on the player’s starting country. The key discovery is the refutation of the theoretical assumption regarding Portugal’s role in the market. The analysis showed that this ecosystem does not primarily serve as a gateway to the football elite, but rather functions as a relentless sieve. Overall, the thesis confirms that the international migration of players is not random, but is driven by strong and predictable patterns.