September 5 – Transfer fees paid by clubs across Europe’s big-5 leagues jumped by 41% in the 2017 period to €5.9 billion with the Premier League clubs leading the way spending about €1.55 billion in fixed transfer fees and €220 million in conditional payments – on average about €89 million per club.
The CIES Football Observatory has tracked the money invested by clubs and matched it against previous transfer spends as well as looking at the distribution of the money between leagues and which clubs may have overspent on players.
The key finding in terms of distribution of funds was that €3.7 billion (71% of the total) was between clubs in the Big-5 leagues but only 52% of transfers involved players from teams in those competitions.
This leads the CIES authors to conclude that “rather than call into question the usefulness of the transfer system, as argued by FIFPro notably, the CIES Football Observatory analysis makes a case for the reinforcement of redistribution mechanisms. An increase in indemnities paid to training clubs, as well as an augmentation and generalisation of solidarity contributions, such as those planned by FIFA for international transfers, would constitute concrete measures for improving the system.”
Looking at the gaps in value between what clubs spent on players and their estimated values, PSGs overspend on Kylian Mbappe of €84.5 million comes top of the table followed by Barcelona’s overspend of €51.2 million on Ousmane Dembele. They are followed by Man City’s €29 million overspend on Benjamin Mendy.
Everton also jumped into the overspenders chart in fourth and fifth position paying €27.5 million too much for Jordan Pickford and €25.2 million too much for Gylfi Sigurdsson. In contrast cross-town neighbours Liverpool topped the best value deals of the year, according to CIES figures, underpaying by €19.4 million for Mohammed Salah.
Source: CIES Football Observatory
See the full report at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/mr/mr27/en/
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