September 19 – Manchester City, who open their Champions League campaign tonight, have the most expensively assembled squad in the world, put together at a cost of almost €1 billion in transfer fees.
That is almost €200 million more than the second highest big spender, French giants Paris St Germain who are just €2 million ahead of Manchester United. Liverpool, who beat PSG last night in the opening night of this season’s Champions League group stages, are ranked fourth in the table, €81 million behind Man Utd and €14 million ahead of Barcelona.
The data, compiled by the CIES Football Observatory, shows seven English Premier League teams in the 11 top positions with the biggest increase, compared to last year, measured for Liverpool (from €437 million to €704 million).
Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus and Paris St-Germain are the only non-English teams in the top 11. The best-ranked German Bundesliga club is Bayern Munich at 12th.
“Total transfer expenditure to make up the squad for clubs from the five major European leagues went constantly up during the last decade. In 2010, a big-5 league had spent on average €67 million to sign its squad members. In 2018, this figure reached a new record high of €161 million. During the same period, the amounts invested to assemble the squad by English Premier League clubs went up from €126 million to €326 million,” said the CIES authors.
See the full report at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2018/233/en/
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