About Golviva
The goal first — then a second opinion on every player
Golviva is built around the moment a goal goes in: live scores, and goal alerts that reach your phone as soon as the ball crosses the line. Around that, an independent, explainable transfer value for every player in Europe's top divisions — we don't mirror market values, we challenge them, and we show our work.
Why we built Golviva
Football is lived in moments, and the biggest one is a goal. Golviva exists to bring it to you first — the scorer, the minute and the score, on your phone and your Lock Screen, for the teams and players you follow. Its other half is a valuation you can interrogate: market values are a single crowd-sourced number with no breakdown, so ours says not just what a player is worth but why, and where the consensus might be wrong.
The model in brief
The model doesn't start from zero. It takes a player's market value as its anchor and asks whether the evidence says that price is too high or too low. Each factor can move the value only within set limits, and where there is little evidence the estimate stays near the market. The result reads as a premium or a discount on the price, and every step of it is on the player's page.
Four factors, each one tested
Four things move a value. Age and trajectory: how players of the same age and price have gone on to develop, measured on our own history, with young players usually rising past what the market lists and older ones falling below it. Performance: a player's output and match ratings against what players at his price normally produce. Contract: how close he is to leaving for free. Durability: the days he has lost to injury over the last two years. Caps and honours were tested too and left out, because they told us nothing the price didn't already know. Each factor has a cap, and its share of the gap is shown on the profile.
Not another market value
Transfermarkt and similar sites publish a consensus price. Golviva puts its own estimate beside it and says how far apart the two are, in euros and in words: which factor pushes the value up and which pulls it down. When the evidence agrees with the market, the two numbers sit close together and we say so.
Where the numbers come from
Squads, ages, positions, contracts and market values come from public football sources; match and season statistics from a professional football data provider. Statistics refresh every few hours during the season, injuries every day and squads every week, and the model recomputes at least once a day. Every player, club, league and national team links to the others, so the context of a number is never more than a click away.
What a model can't know
A Golviva value is an estimate, not a fee, an offer or financial advice. Real transfers depend on negotiation, agents, deadlines and what a club needs that summer, and no model sees all of that. That is why we publish the method and the factor breakdown: so you can decide how far to trust each number, and tell us where you think it's wrong.
How the newsroom works
Golviva News covers the most important stories of the day and nothing else. The newsroom follows about 45 outlets in seven languages, among them BBC Sport, The Athletic, Marca, kicker, L'Équipe, La Gazzetta dello Sport and TRT Spor, as well as the reporters who break transfer stories. A story is written only after several independent outlets report it, weighed by how reliable they are and how prominent the people in it are. AI helps draft each article from those reports, in our own words and in eight languages: every source is named and linked, confirmed facts are kept apart from reports and rumours, and we add the context only Golviva has, such as our values, contracts and season numbers. A photo appears only when we may use it and it meets our quality bar. When a story moves on, the article is updated and says when; to report a mistake, write to admin@golviva.com.
Who's behind Golviva
Golviva is an independent project run by people who love football and data. No club, agency, bookmaker or data company owns or steers it. Corrections, questions and ideas are always welcome: write to us any time.
Frequently asked questions
- How accurate are Golviva's valuations?
- They are independent estimates, not guarantees. Golviva anchors to the market and then adjusts with bounded, explainable factors, so each number stays grounded while expressing where we think the price is off. Because the full reasoning is shown on every profile, you can judge each estimate for yourself rather than taking it on trust.
- How is Golviva different from Transfermarkt?
- Transfermarkt reports a market consensus; Golviva produces an independent valuation and quantifies the gap between the two. Instead of one opaque figure you get a per-factor breakdown and a clear "vs market" delta showing where — and why — we disagree. That disagreement, fully explained, is the entire point.
- What makes a player "undervalued" or "overvalued" here?
- Golviva reads performance as a mispricing signal: a player who outperforms others priced at the same level is flagged undervalued, while one who underperforms their price is overvalued. When output and price line up, the model sits close to the market. It is a relative judgement within a player's position and tier, not an absolute one.
- How do age and potential affect the value?
- Age is the strongest driver we can measure. On our own history, young players' market values — and the fees clubs actually pay for them — keep rising above what the market lists today, while players past their prime keep falling below it. Golviva applies part of that measured drift: a development premium that shrinks for players already priced as stars, and a depreciation discount past each position's prime — bounded, so it nudges the value rather than re-pricing it.
- What if a player has no recent statistics?
- Players without stats are treated as neutral, never as weak. The performance factor simply sits at neutral — no premium, no discount — so the valuation leans on the market anchor and the other factors. We would rather say we do not have enough to add a view than invent one.
- Where does the data come from, and how often does it update?
- Squad, age, position, contract and market-value data come from public football sources; performance comes from official season statistics. Values are recomputed whenever the underlying data refreshes, and every figure behind an estimate is shown on the page.
- Are Golviva numbers real transfer fees?
- No. They are independent model estimates — not actual fees, offers, or financial advice. Real deals are shaped by negotiation, agents, timing and club need that no model fully captures; we publish the methodology precisely so you can weigh each estimate on its merits.
- Why do you sometimes disagree sharply with the market?
- Because that is what an independent valuation is for. When our factors point one way and the crowd prices another, we show the gap and the reasons behind it rather than smoothing it over. You are free to disagree with us in turn — the breakdown is right there to argue with.
Want to see it in practice? Open the player values