Gareth Bale
The
English Premier League’s standing as the world’s richest sporting
competition remains intact after the transfer window closed late on
Monday night.
The 20 Premier League clubs between them
shelled out a massive total of £630m (about $1bn or €768m) on players,
almost as much as the Spanish and Italian top-flight clubs put together.
Financial analysts Deloitte point out
that that figure is £130m more than a year ago, an increase of 29 per
cent, fuelled largely by a massive increase in TV funding.
Spanish clubs, led by Real Madrid’s
reported 100 million euro capture of Gareth Bale from Tottenham Hotspur
and the 57 mllion euros Brazilian Neymar is said to have cost Barcelona,
paid a total of 395 million euros ($521 m, £335m) in fees, a staggering
205 percent more than 2012.
That figure was matched by Italian Serie
A clubs, but it represented an increase of only eight per cent year on
year, with the key deal seeing Napoli part with €37m for Real Madrid’s
Argentine striker Gonzalo Higuain.
This year, that total was almost
rivalled by the French league, where massive injections of foreign cash
into Paris Saint-Germain and Monaco, saw an outlay of €375m ($490m,
£315m), up 66 per cent on 2012.
PSG led the way, paying Napoli €64m for
Uruguayan Edinson Cavani and a further €31m to Roma for Brazilian
Marquinhos, while Monaco landed Radamel Falcao from Atletico Madrid for
€60m and made a double €70m swoop on Porto for James Rodriquez and Joao
Moutinho.
But at a time when the pressure is on
clubs to toe the line drawn by UEFA’s financial fairness code, Germany’s
Bundesliga again proved an appropriate role model.
Clubs have long learned to limit their
outgoings and this year they were the lowest spenders in the window,
parting with €270m ($358m, £230m) which was, nevertheless a 10 per cent
increase on the year before.
The biggest-money deals saw European
champions Bayern Munich land Mario Gotze from rivals Dortmund for €37m,
while Dortmund re-invested that in Henrich Mikhtaryan from Shakhtar
Donetsk and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang from Saint-Eitienne.
In England, £230m of the total was paid
by the four Champions League representatives – Arsenal, Chelsea,
Manchester City and Manchester United.
Of those, Manchester City got their
deals done early, with a trio of £20m-plus signings in Fernandinho from
Shakhtar, Alvaro Negredo from Sevilla and Stevan Jovetic from
Fiorentina, while Chelsea’s outlay was headed by the £32m capture of
Willian.
But Arsenal and United both left it
late, doing their most significant deals on the final day, with Mesut
Ozil joining Arsenal from Real Madrid for £42.5m and Marouane Fellaini
joining United from Everton for £27.5m.
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