March 10 – New data from the CIES, the Swiss-based Centre for Sports Studies, finds that €1.072 billion has been generated from sales of academy players by clubs in Europe’s Big 5 leagues. Topping the chart is Premier League club Southampton earning €90.2 million from sales since July 2012.
In terms of leagues there are four Spanish and four French clubs in the Top 10, with Dortmund being the only German entrant.
When it comes to leagues, Italy’s Serie A – currently agonising over a lack of home-grown talent – comes bottom of the Big 5 accounting for just 11% of the total. France’s Ligue 1 is top, accounting for 27%, a percentage point ahead of Spain’s La Liga.
The fees received by Southampton for the transfer of Adam Lallana, Luke Shaw and Calum Chambers represent almost 40% of the total incomes of current Premier League clubs for the transfer of club-trained footballers during the last three seasons.
Saints were followed in the table by Lille (€76 million), Spain’s Real Socieded (€62.2 million) and Sevilla (€51.5 million) and Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund (€43.5 million).
Talk amongst pundits is often whether a club is a “buying or selling” club. Saints have in recent seasons been referred to as a selling club, graduating its academy stars through its first team and then on-selling to big clubs, often quite quickly. Putting the figures into perspective, Manchester United’s success under Sir Alex Ferguson was built on a core of academy players (Scholes, Beckham, Giggs, the Neville brothers).
With the strength of the French academy system it is not surprising that so many of their clubs rank highly in the chart. Perhaps what is surprising is that Qatari owned Paris St Germain which has bought some of the world’s top talent, appears just behind Man Utd in 14th in the list of clubs. Bayern Munich are just ahead of United in 12th place.
Spain’s Real Madrid and Barcelona feature higher up the table at sixth and seventh.
Source: CIES
View the CIES data at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/pdf/wp102_eng-2.pdf
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