Seeing Giakoumakis bag a brace for Cruz Azul in his second game for the club evokes a familiar mixed bag of feelings. I am partially happy for him as I want him to succeed, partly sad that he left, partly confused about why he couldn't do that for us, and partly annoyed that he left on such a sad note to go on and succeed at Cruz Azul. I want to be able to just be happy for him but I can't help but feel somewhat bitter and this is compounded by the fact that it feels like everyone who leaves Atlanta has their best season ever after leaving.
From Pity Martinez playing with Ronaldo in Saudi Arabia to Josef immediately winning the Leagues Cup with Messi, it truly feels like the grass is greener on the other side and like everyone finally plays to their full potential after leaving Atlanta. Is that really the case, though? Does everyone really play better immediately after leaving Atlanta?
To see if this was the case, I compiled the statistics of 10 of Atlanta United's biggest outgoing transfers for the season before and after their transfer. To keep the comparison as simple as possible, I looked at FotMob's rating, their goals scored, and their assist tally. This gave some interesting if not expected results. It turns out, at least as far as individual performances, that everyone doesn't suddenly play better after leaving. The average change in rating between the two seasons was an insignificant -0.02. When you remove Almiron, someone who was so prolific at Atlanta and so insignificant for his first season at Newcastle that he shifts the statistics, the self-pity is a bit more justified as the players averaged an increase of 0.08 in rating. Still not a lot but they got a little better on average.
The goals scored and assisted both went down no matter how you looked at it, though, and it is clear the moping about everyone leaving and playing great is unwarranted. At least for the top players, it is possible that the more minor players we let go of lit it up after transferring but that wasn't the case for the stars. This makes sense, especially when you consider that to warrant a transfer you have to play well and then there is often a transition period where the players grow into a squad. This logic could support the idea that having roughly consistent statistics between seasons is good but as far as I'm concerned, the idea of players lighting it up after leaving Atlanta is baseless. Below are the statistics, per FotMob.com:
Fascinating!
What about all the non-marquee transfers? The LGPs and George Campbells of the world?
I’m willing to bet everyone does improve on being transferred—since part of the point of transferring is finding a place where you can play more/be a better fit, and a young player should keep getting better season/season. Still curious what a full analysis of every transfer would look like.
(Also, to be a stats dork, anytime the difference in means is point something something, it’s almost guaranteed to be statistically insignificant)