The contribution of Johan Cruyff to success and stadium attendance at Feyenoord

ABSTRACT

In his last season as professional football player, Johan Cruyff played at Feyenoord. This paper shows that Cruyff improved the performance of his team and attracted more attendants to the home stadium. From this it is concluded that Cruyff made a superstar contribution to his club Feyenoord.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional football
• superstar
• Johan Cruyff
• Feyenoord

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Z21
• D12
• C23

Acknowledgments

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. The author thanks an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ The matches against Ajax were all sold-out and therefore not included in the analysis. Schreyer and Ansari (2021) provide a recent overview of studies on stadium attendance.

² Expected points are calculated using ELO-ratings based probabilities to win (pw) and draw (pd). The expected points are equal to 2*pw+pd.

³ For championship significance the Jennett (1984) measure is used which is based on the (mathematical) probability to win the championship. The measure is defined at the seasonal level for match number $n$ as $1/(35-n)$. The assumption is that the final rank is known in advance. As soon as the championship is achieved – by the club itself or a competitor – or in case it is mathematically impossible to obtain the championship the measure is equal to zero. If the championship is decided in the last (34${ }^{th}$) match the measure is equal to one in that match.

⁴ Some of the dependent variables have a discrete nature. However, estimating an ordered probit model for points or probit models for win and loss probabilities does not change the main findings.

⁵ If opponent fixed effects are included these absorb the ELO-rating of the opponent. Then the Cruyff effect becomes larger and statistically significant at a 10% level.