The winter transfer window concluded the same day the International Monetary Fund announced that, according to its forecasts, the United Kingdom, dunce of the G7, would see its economy contract by 0.6% in 2023; in other words, would experience an even more severe recession than Putin’s Russia, sanctions or no sanctions. At the same time, the country is now periodically paralyzed by strike movements that affect almost all trades, and whose magnitude continues to increase.
The Premier League does not have these worries or problems. She lives well on another planet, including the view of her own country. Its stadiums are full, its coffers too.
Premier League
A 330 million frenzy: Chelsea, the first “championship” in terms of spending
15 HOURS AGO
As proof, record after record was broken in January, as usual, but even more spectacularly this time. Number of transfers over 20 million euros concluded during a winter market (fourteen). Total gross amount spent by elite clubs: 830 million, or more than 40 million per club on average. And above all, total amount net, the one that says it all about the financial power of a league: 729 million. For comparison, the previous record, set in 2020 and obviously held by the PL, was 203 million.
Todd Boehly, owner of Chelsea
Credit: Imago
It’s not that the English are crushing the competition: it’s that there’s no more competition. The other championships aren’t trailing a breakaway. They are released for good, still at the bottom of the first of the passes that the other has already crossed. Of its supposed rivals, the only one that has spent anything net is the Bundesliga – and even then, barely, since its balance is 1 million euros, 729 times less than the PL – and fifteen times less than the American MLS, by the way. The other major European leagues all posted a surplus, 13.2 million for La Liga, 34.8 million for Serie A (more timid in this respect than in any other season since 2006, when three Italian clubs were in the UEFA European Top 5) and 69.2 million for Ligue 1, faithful to its image as an export market.
56.2 million invested by Bournemouth
The English, they import with a vengeance. Only two of the fourteen transfers worth more than 20 million have been concluded on the English internal market, those of Anthony Gordon from Everton (who has no money left) to Newcastle (for whom this is the last of the problems) and Brighton’s Leandro Trossard at Arsenal. If you wanted proof that, when it comes to football, Brexit hasn’t dampened England’s appetite for continental produce, you have it.
And it’s not just Chelsea, even more of a spender now that the club is flying under the American flag than when Roman Abramovich owned it, who behaved like a glutton, albeit with a disbursement of 318 million netmust we insist, leaves you speechless, and was only made possible by a unique accounting sleight of hand
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This is how Bournemouth, currently relegated, have invested 56.2 million to try to preserve their precious status in the English Top 20, while Southampton, red lantern, have spent seven more. And even some Championship clubs are in on the fun, at least those hoping to move up the ante.
How many European D2 clubs have the necessary arguments to convince a Dutch international defender, Wesley Hoedt, to leave Anderlecht, as Watford has just done? How many European D1 clubs, not just D2, can afford to drop eleven million on a single player, which Burnley paid Westerlo to bring in South African international center forward Lyle Foster?
The clubs know what they are doing
In other circumstances, we could praise the restraint of other championships, underline its virtues, and see in the Premier League’s spending spree the sign that it has lost all sense of reality and that’s it, the bubble will finally burst, as we have been predicting for twenty years. The problem is that, with few exceptions, these clubs know exactly what they are doing, that the bubble has not finished climbing higher, further, and that investors, Americans in particular, are fighting to be able to climb with her.
England’s financial dominance is such that this year, for the first time, more than half of the world’s Top 20 ‘richest clubs in the world’ compiled by Deloitte came from the same league. No need to specify which one. Sixteen of his twenty clubs were in the Top 30, which is even more significant. The economy of European football is not dominated by a few clubs which, in their own countries, would be exceptions, such as Real, Barça and Atlético in Spain, and take the biggest slice of the pie, but crushed by a collective.
Jorginho
Credit: Getty Images The TV rights on which England’s dominance rests are, as we know, more evenly shared between its clubs than anywhere else in Europe; their value continues to rise. A new three-year cycle began in 2022/2023, which will further accentuate the supremacy of the PL in this area. While so-called “domestic” rights, shared by Sky, BT, Amazon Prime and the BBC in the UK, remained stable, those paid by foreign broadcasters increased by 26% compared to the previous cycle, which is translated by an additional 422 million euros to be shared per season. The twenty PL clubs in the Top 30 of the Football Rich List
? It’s just a matter of time.
Seen from the outside, England is reminiscent of that fabled millionaire who bet on all the horses in a race in order to be sure of winning it; and in a way, it is correct that she does. Rare are the talents that escape him. An English club aligns with a player, and it is unlikely that he will escape, unless it is another English club that burns his politeness. To stop there, however, would be on the wrong track. In this specific case, it makes sense to do everything to win the race in question, because the objective is to be the only one to contest it. Financially, this is already the case. On the sporting level, there is a good chance that it will become so.
Since transfers are amortized over the term of the contract, it is possible for a club to record only a fraction of the total amount of the transaction each season, even if the terms of payment are staggered over a shorter period. . Chelsea therefore had their winter recruits sign contracts of an unusual length. Enzo Fernandez, the last of the arrivals, has signed up for eight and a half years. Their purchase price being 121 million, Chelsea will only include in their 2022-23 balance sheet 121 divided by 8.5, or 14.2 million, a tiny bit more than what Arsenal paid them to acquire Jorgenho. Because the receipts, they are accounted for in their entirety in the balance sheet of the fiscal year during which the transfer was concluded. Note that UEFA, which prohibits clubs from offering contracts of more than five years, but leaves it to each country to determine whether this ban applies to it, intends to put an end to this practice.
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Premier League
121 million for the Premier League record: Fernandez joins Chelsea
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Transfers