With a collective made up of stars, will the French men’s football team have less chance of winning the 2026 World Cup than teams with a stronger collective, organized around less famous players?
Because after “years of hardship and combat”Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) won the UEFA Champions League in the 2024-2025 season, following the departure of Lionel Messi, Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior and Kylian Mbappé, three of the best footballers in the world, before retaining the European title this season. Time and time again, the football world has demonstrated how highly talented teams can disappoint, while less well-resourced teams often exceed expectations.
Our recent research challenges the preconceived idea that, when it comes to stars, “more is always better”. By cross-referencing data from 1,750 matches from 91 teams in the five main European men’s football leagues during the 2017-2018 season, we showed that the relationship between the proportion of star players and team performance draws an inverted U. Beyond a certain threshold, each additional star reduces the probability of victory. Our tipping point: 60% stars in the squad. Beyond that, performance begins to decline.
In our study, a player is considered a “star” if he obtains an average “FIFA video game” rating ≥ 80/100 over three consecutive seasons. This threshold corresponds to the highest 1% among the 29,869 players listed in the database and only 10% of players in the five leagues studied. In terms of cost, their median market value reaches 17.4 million euros, compared to 2.1 million for an ordinary player, or almost eight times more.
Passing circuits
What really makes the difference between a good team and a bad team is not so much who is on it, but how they work together. To do this, we modeled the passing circuits of each match in the form of matrices. So who passes the ball to whom?
Two parameters were measured:
- The density of the “passing pattern”, that is, the degree to which players are connected to each other by passing. The denser this network is, the more players there are who directly exchange the ball with each other;
- Its centrality, or the degree to which the game is concentrated around one or a few players.
To win, star-studded teams must create passing patterns where more players are connected to each other through passes.
These parameters were then cross-referenced with the proportion of star players in each team and the match result. Conclusion: Clubs with several stars perform worse when their game relies on a small number of these stars, while the rest of their squad remains on the sidelines. Conversely, teams whose ball circulates between all players, without systematically returning to the same players, take better advantage of their stars.
Densified and decentralized
For example, in the 2017-2018 Bundesliga season, Bayern Munich fielded 71% star players. Thanks to a passing circuit that is both dense – where many players exchange the ball directly between themselves – and decentralized – no player monopolizes the game –, the club beat Borussia Dortmund 6-1, which has 43% stars. Conversely, AS Roma (50% stars), whose passing circuit was too centralized around its stars, suffered a 1-3 defeat against Inter Milan (36% stars).
To win, star-studded teams must create passing patterns where more players are connected to each other through passes. The few stars should not monopolize the game; the players of the team must take turns to manage the game. This pattern alleviates the pressure on each player and ensures that the whole team contributes to the collective performance.
Effective passing tactic
We also found that teams with only 25% stars, but with better organized passing tactics – less dense, but decentralized, with different players taking turns taking an active part in the game rather than a few players monopolizing the ball – could outperform teams with a much stronger talent pool. The former display a probability of victory 35% higher than what their level of talent alone would suggest and even beat in probability teams made up of more than 60% poorly organized stars.
Managers who lead teams with many talents – research and development (R&D) teams, management committees, cross-functional working groups – expose themselves to diminishing or even negative returns.
Performance does not depend solely on individual talent, but on the quality of collaboration methods within the team. Our research shifts the manager’s gaze from the question of “who” to that of “how”. Without team collaboration styles and appropriate relationships, even the most talented teams can fail.
This paradigm shift is beginning to take hold in forward-thinking organizations. In management sciences, leadership is less and less conceived as an individual role; it becomes a collective process in which members collaborate to produce results that they could not achieve alone. What should managers do differently?
Talent does not guarantee performance
Managers who lead teams with many talents – research and development (R&D) teams, management committees, cross-functional working groups – expose themselves to diminishing or even negative returns. In our study, the tipping point is 60% stars. Beyond that, performance declines.
These teams share a decisive characteristic with football teams: the interdependence of their tasks. It is precisely this interdependence that determines whether individual talent is transformed into collective performance. Less talented teams can obtain good results by playing on the quality of their internal organization. Furthermore, a star player costs almost eight times more than an ordinary player. Resources spent recruiting stars can sometimes be better spent structuring collaboration within the existing team.
Increase collective returns
Managers must go beyond simply acquiring talented employees and instead actively think about how to structure their teams’ collaboration to improve collective performance.
Our study suggests three concrete levers to activate:
- Reorganize tasks and information flows to create collaboration modes adapted to the profile of employees with the most potential;
- Establish these configurations from the start. Intramatch analyzes show strong inertia in collaboration patterns: once established, they persist;
- Actively monitor these operations throughout the life of the project, to prevent unforeseen events – departure of a key member, early success or failure – from destabilizing the optimal plans.
Great teams are not a simple collection of talent; they are designed to create connections. Talent is just potential; these are well-thought-out modes of collaboration that transform it into performance. Rather than engaging in the “war for talent,” managers would benefit from orchestrating what they already have.
