September 10 – Manchester City are the world’s first billion euro squad by transfer value, with a combined player cost of €1.014 billion following activity in the summer transfer window just closed.
Analysis by the CIES Football Observatory of player transfer data and the cost by club of assembling squads in Europe’s Big 5 leagues, found that eight of the clubs in the top 20 by value were from England’s Premier League with four each from LaLiga and Serie A, and two from the Bundesliga and France’s Ligue 1.
Seven of the eight English clubs have non-English majority owners.
Paris St-Germain (€913 million) come second in the ranking while Real Madrid (€902 million) are third.
“The gap between the costliest and cheapest squad per league is x148 in the Liga (Real Madrid vs Mallorca), x114 in the Ligue 1 (Paris St-Germain vs Nîmes), x85 in the Bundesliga (Bayern vs Paderborn), x63 in the Serie A (Juventus vs Lecce) and x32 in the Premier League (Manchester City vs Norwich). This reflects the great financial divides in European football,” say the report authors.
“The average transfer expenditure to sign current squad members per league is €345 million in the Premier League, €167 million in both the Liga and the Serie A, €124 million in the Bundesliga and €118 million in the Ligue 1.”
See the full report at https://football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2019/wp266/en/
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