Transfer Records across Top 5 Leagues: a case study in financial disparity
Before getting to the details of today’s topic, I just wanted to clarify something. Transfer expenses are not the best way to judge a team’s financial capacity. It also doesn’t have a high correlation with a team’s success. On the other hand, wages are a much better indicator for both. In fact, as per a study done across Premier League and Championship described in the book ‘Soccernomics’, wage spending explained more than 90% of the variation in league positions.
So, why are we using transfer record signings, which is essentially an individual piece of data, to represent an entire football club and then compare them with their peers? Because it is an exciting piece of data, one that always grabs the limelight. The first thing you look for during a new transfer is the signing amount and not the wage component. And then again, this is just a different way of looking at things.
With that in mind, I have made a list of the record transfer signings made by each club in the Top 5 European Leagues as of this season. I have just picked clubs that were in English, Spanish, Italian, German, and French top division in 21–22. So no Werder Bremen, Malaga or Parma. The total list includes 98 names (since the Bundesliga has 18 teams). All data has been gathered from Transfermarkt.
Here are the first 30 players on that list and their transfer amounts.
So while it might appear that 50 million+ transfers are so common these days, only 15 football clubs have ever paid that much for a player (excluding some of the Chinese teams). Another thing that you might notice, there are a lot of Premier League teams here. 10 in the top 20 and 12 in the top 30. In comparison, this list has 6 each from La Liga and Serie A, 4 from Bundesliga, and 2 from Ligue 1.
The financial disparity between clubs in EPL and everywhere else across Europe is huge. At the very top, it is still a close game. Teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, and PSG too can spend over 100 million on a player like Manchester City, Chelsea, and Manchester United. But then the gap starts magnifying. And I have tried to illustrate it with the following chart.
As you can see here, no league is able to keep up with EPL after the top 3 teams. Teams from Premier League have spent more than double the amount on their record signing compared to their other European counterparts in most cases. Let’s take the case of West Ham, who are 7th on this chart in the Premier League row. They paid €50 million for Sebastian Haller. Compared to them, Seville spent €25 million on Jules Kounde, Fiorentina spent €24.5 million on Nicolas Gonzalez, Gladbach spent €23 million on Alassane Plea while Nice spent €20.5 million on Kasper Dolberg.
To make things more interesting, here is a fancy little table for you. I have taken the previous list and divided these teams into various brackets basis their transfer record amount (up to €20 million).
Again, we are only taking into consideration teams that were part of the top 5 leagues in 21–22. So, even though Schalke signed Breel Embolo for €26.5 million, they are not represented here courtesy of being in 2. Bundesliga for that season.
Let’s take a closer look at that table. The first thing that again comes to mind is how stacked the Premier League is compared to others. 15 clubs from EPL have made a signing of €30 million or more, which is essentially 75% of the league. The equivalent figure is 30% or less for all others. Apart from showing how rich the Premier League is, this also gives some reasoning into why Premier League is (or is at least considered), the most competitive of the top leagues. The gap in transfer signings is less between the very top teams and ones placed a tier below.
Compare this to La Liga, where the top 3 teams have made over 100 million signings, but Valencia, the next best is stuck at 40 million. While the difference is less in Bundesliga, Bayern itself is significantly above everyone else. Serie A does a little better, at least at the top where the gap is less. This was one of the reasons why Italian football presented an incredible title race this season. But here too, numbers dip drastically after the top 6. And the lesser we talk about Ligue 1 the better.
Also looking at this table, we can appreciate the achievements of some of these lesser valued teams in Europe. Seville, of course, is the most prominent but also Villareal and Eintracht in recent seasons. Each of these sides had to overcome teams with strong financial muscle to win the Europa League. French teams like Lille, who won the league in 2021, or Lyon, who reached the UCL semi-final in 2020 also deserve some applause.
I’ll conclude this article with some trivia that I found quite interesting-
- Romelu Lukaku is the record signing for two different clubs (Chelsea and Inter Milan). But so is the Argentine forward Nicolas Gonzalez. Stuttgart signed him in 2018 for €11.3 million and three years later sold him to Fiorentina for €24.5 million. Also on this list is Ousmane Dembele, who Dortmund manage to sell for more than 3x of what they bought him for as their record signing.
- Some of these club transfer records have stood for decades. Real Betis broke the world transfer record to sign the Brazilian striker Denilson back in 1998 while Lazio did the same for Hernan Crespo in 2000. Those records still stand at a club level. In fact, Lazio’s seven most expensive transfer arrivals were all pre-2002. It has been quite a decline for the club since then.
- In a few odd cases, players returned to their former clubs for record sums. Lukaku and Pogba are the two high-profile ones. But this list also includes names like Dimitri Payet (Marseille to West Ham to Marseille) and Asier Illarramendi (Real Sociedad to Real Madrid to Real Sociedad).
Hope you had fun reading this !!
