English champions Manchester City have spent nearly €1 billion assembling their current squad – the highest figure ever recorded for a football team.
According to the latest CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post, the Premier League champions have spent a total of €976m in transfer indemnities to sign its present squad members (add-ons included).
Belgian attacking midfielder Kevin De Bruyne remains the club’s most expensive acquisition at €77.12m, brought in from Wolfsburg in 2015/16.
The next most expensive signing is Riyad Mahrez, who was signed from Leicester City this summer for €68.7m, with Spanish centre-back Aymeric Laporte rounding out the top three with his €65.965m arrival from Sevilla in January.
Issue number 233 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presents the data for all of Europe’s big five league teams – Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1.
Six of the top 10 are Premier League sides, with Manchester United (€786m) third on the list, with rivals Liverpool (€705m) behind them in fourth, Chelsea (€673m) sixth and London duo Arsenal (€428m) and Tottenham (€393) ninth and 10th respectively.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s move to Juventus has seen the Italian giants move up to seventh on the list and past his former club, Real Madrid.
Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, Juventus and Real Madrid are the non-English teams in the top 10.
PSG are second, just ahead of United with a total spend of €788m, Barca (€691m) are fifth, with Juve (€532m) seventh, just ahead of Los Blancos (€447m) in eighth.
The highest-ranked Bundesliga club are Bayern Munich (€380m) in 12th, who have spent less than Everton (€385m) in 11th.
The biggest increase compared to last year was measured for Liverpool (from €437m to €705m).
Total transfer expenditure to make up the squad for clubs from the five major European leagues has been constantly on the rise during the last decade.
In 2010, the top five leagues on average spent €67m to sign its squad members. In 2018, this figure reached a new record high of €161m. During the same period, the average amounts invested to assemble the squad by English Premier League clubs went up from €126m to €326m.
