September 12 – A calculation of transfer fees spent on forming teams in the Big 5 leagues has found that Manchester City, with a spend of €853 million, has the most expensively assembled squad in football history.
The ranking by the CIES Football Observatory of every team in the Big 5 leagues lists 12 Premier League teams ranked in the 25, while only newly promoted Huddersfield were the only English club outside the top 50 at 53 (squad value €62 million). Six English teams fill the top 10 positions.
After the Manchester teams come Chelsea (4th), Liverpool (8th), Arsenal (9th) and Spurs (10th). Barcelona, Real Madrid and Juventus fill positions five to seven. The difference in squad values to the rest of the top 10 are huge – Arsenal and Spurs are less than half the value of Man City.
Paris St-Germain pushed Man City a close second with a value of €853 million, while Manchester United (the previous record holder) were third at €784 million.
Looking at how transfer fees had increased over the past year, CIES finds: “Manchester City’s total transfer fee expenditure to make up its squad went up by €242 million compared to September 2016. The increase was even stronger for Paris St-Germain: +€395 million (including the €180 million investment for Mbappé). The figure for Manchester United is ‘only’ €66 million higher than one year ago, while that of Champions League winners Real Madrid went down by €138 million.”
The CIES research counts the aggregated values per league with the €5.7 billion value for the Premier League (on average €287 million per team, +28% compared to previous year) being more than twice the €2.4 billion for Serie A (€122 million per team, +26%). La Liga’s value is €2.2 billion (€110m per team, +9%), the Bundesliga comes in at €1.9 billion (€107m per team, +19%) and Ligue 1 at €1.6 billion (€93 million per team, +78%).
Source: CIES Football Observatory
See the full stats at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2017/194/en/
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