Victor Osimhen to Napoli - Transfer Analysis

Focusing on team playing style similarities (k-means clustering)

The aim of this thread is to introduce a new method I was working on in the last couple of weeks, called team playing style similarity

Based on 21 metrics, I used k-means clustering to identify similarities between teams across the world.

My theory is that risk management plays a significant role in modern football's transfers. Clubs can cut a big chunk of risk by recruiting players from

a, similar leagues
b, similar teams

This way footballers fit in faster and smoother into their new team, they require less time to pick up the pace of the league or to learn the club's style of play.

But let's take a look at how the concept works in real life:

This chart shows the 15 teams whose style is the most similar to Napoli's. I also inculded Osimhen's current team, Lille.

The study includes 674 different teams. This chart shows the whole picture: Lille is in the top 10% of the most similar teams to Napoli.

That being said - based on my calculations - Osimhen should fit in relatively smoothly into his new team

However there is another aspect we should consider: the similarities between the leagues.

If the player fits his new team, but faces different type of teams than he used to, his integration might take more time.

Ligue 1 and Serie A are not the most similar leagues, but the situation could be worse overall.

To put these numbers into context, here is how Napoli's transfers looked like in the last season. To calculate distance, I summed the distance of similarities on the level of leagues and teams.

This business would be slightly riskier than what Napoli is used to, but considering how tight the market for top strikers is (and Osimhen is probably in that bracket), the Italian team should take this risk in my opinion.

The model is still not perfect, as team playing styles could change from one season to the other. I just wanted to react to the recent rumours from a slightly different point of view.

Feel free to tell me what do you think about all this, so I can improve the tool even further.