February 7 – The January transfer window may have seemed quieter than previous years but it still broke records with the CIES Football Observatory data showing clubs in the five major European championships having invested a record €742 million on new players, beating the previous record of €523 million set in 2011.Total spend in the window (including clubs outside the Big 5 leagues of England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) reached €921 million – that includes Big 5 league clubs selling players outside of their circle.
CIES says: “Deals internal to the five major championships represented 48.8% of the total volume of transactions (€450 million The remaining money is subdivided into the recruitment of players from clubs outside the big-5 (€292 million) and the selling of players to non big-5 league clubs (€179 million), in particular to China (€120 million).”
Not surprisingly the English Premier League clubs topped the spend at €443 million. They were followed by France’s Ligue 1 (€225 million). As previously reported by Insideworldfootball, the Premier League club balance sheet is positive at +€51 million in this window. In contrast CIES points out the negative balance for Ligue 1 of -€150 million.
Source: CIES Football Observatory
View the CIES data at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2016/175/en/
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