Determinations of the Contract Duration of Football Players

This paper identifies the effect of different characteristics and performance measures of forward soccer players on their market valuation and contract duration. The paper combines the data for 292 forward players from English, Spanish, Italian and French Premier Leagues. The data for the analysis was gathered manually because there is no one unique database and around 15 characteristics of forward players were collected for the 3-year period prior to signing a contract. In this study we found that several previous years of player performance are looked up by potential club. Characteristics of the recent year is more efficient than the earliest ones. Furthermore, forwards have their own and unique characteristics which include only half of the expected ones. In addition, one index or indicator should aggregate those characteristics. The model has shown that monetary value of the player should have further analysis that is also provided. Several performance measures have unexpected results, such as minutes of the player will have negative effect on his value. As well, new variables of transfer and loan have also proved their effectiveness and identify the negative relation to the future contract duration.