England beats all market records. Portugal with new high
The Premier League once again made a huge show of economic power in the transfer market that closed on Thursday night. According to data made available by the transfermarkt.com website, top football clubs invest something like 224.9 million euros in footballers, an amount that beats all citizens in a single season, that is, even without taking into account the winter window, which will take place in January.
The Premier League’s supremacy over the other championships that compete around the world is such that, like the other four leagues that are listed as “big 5 million” – Spain, Germany, Italy and France – they spent 2292 euros, that is, just 48 million euros more than England alone.
Interestingly, emblematic since 2014/15, the amount invested since Thursday exceeded two billion euros for the first time. If we take into account the last ten seasons, just the last summer of 2019/20, the window before the start of the pandemic, there was a rapprochement between Spain and Italy in relation to England. At that time, English clubs invested a total of 1543 million euros, with the Spaniards reaching 1376 million and the Italians reaching 1225 million, records that still represent those championships today. In fact, this was the only time that the Spanish League surpassed millions of euros, while this mark was surpassed twice more by the Italian Serie A (2017/18 and 2018/19). Germany and France will never reach this barrier either, having as maximums, respectively, of 748 million euros and 713 million, in what can be considered a fat summer window, before the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, in winter 2020 in Europe. .
In a phase that can already be considered post-pandemic, the English clubs show an Italian that has nothing to do with the others, as the recovery was quite fast and dizzying, as it proved to be quite long among the emblematic forces that are important in the Series. Económica, which in total reached 749 French investments this summer, leaving Ligue 1, which reached 554 million euros in investment, and La Liga, which ended up with 505 million euros, behind the 484 in the Bundesliga.
I Liga invested 170.8 million
Far, far away from this volume of investments is the Portuguese I Liga, which, however, broke its investment record this summer window, reaching 170.8 million euros, of which 62.3 million were spent by Benfica, 48 million by FC Porto, 41.9 million by Sporting and 17.75 by the remaining 15 clubs that happen to be in the championship.
Interestingly, the previous investment record in Portugal had been broken in the summer of 2020/21, when €169 million was reached in the midst of a major pandemic, something that is explained by the fact that, at the time, Benfica made the investment of its history in the order of 115 million euros.
This record of investment by I Liga clubs was, however, offset by the 432.3 million euros from the sale of footballers, with the largest share belonging to Benfica, with 127.3 million euros, followed by Sporting, which earned 119.8 million and FC Porto had 86 million. It should be noted that the remaining 9.2 million euros were distributed among the remaining 15 emblems.
In the list of clubs that received money from player transfers, eagles and lions are not fourth third and, respectively, only behind Ajax (216.2 million euros) and Manchester City (159.9 million). FC Porto appears only in 14th place, according to Transfermarkt data.
At the opposite pole is Chelsea, which this summer invested 281.9 million euros, followed by Manchester United (238), West Ham (182), Tottenham (169.9) and Nottingham Forest (161.9). Only in sixth and seventh place are the first clubs outside the Premier League: Barcelona with 153 million euros invested and Paris Saint-Gmain with 147.5 million.
It should also be noted that Manchester United are the clubs that present the most euros, mainly purchases and sales of players with negative balances of 227.2 and 226.5 million euros, respectively. The first non-English club in this classification is Barcelona with a negative balance of 115 million euros.