September 10 – Manchester City continue to top a ranking of club spending on transfer fees to assemble their squads, but Manchester United are getting close.
Manchester City spent an estimated €1.08 billion to sign their current players while Manchester United spent €1.02 billion, closing the gap on City’s spending to about €58 million, compared to a previous €192 million gap.
The two Manchester clubs are the only ones to have spent over €1 billion in the transfer market to build their squads.
The data, compiled by the CIES Football Observatory, shows that in the top 20 clubs, nine are from the Premier League. The data also highlights the inequalities in spending. PSG rank third overall with a spend of €845 million. The second ranked team in France, Monaco, who are ranked 20th overall, in comparison spent €292 million.
The data showed increased transfer spending by Real Madrid (€787 million, + €79 million) and Chelsea (€780M, + €17 million). “Three further English Premier League teams (Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham), as well as Barcelona and Juventus, also paid more than €500 M in transfer fees to assemble their squads,” said the CIES report authors.
Looking at the data per league, the CIES note: “The average transfer expenditure per team to sign current squad members vary between €410 million for the English Premier League (with a minimum of about €87 million for Norwich City) and €131 million for both the French Ligue 1 (with a minimum for Clermont Foot) and the German Bundesliga (with a minimum for Bochum).”
To see the full data, click here.
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