Such a time has come, that euros are often more interesting than goals. The beginning of 2023 thus brought us three big football stories and all three are more monetary than sports related. Chelsea went crazy with spending 619,490,000 euros in one season, Juventus were punished by deducting 15 points of their tally because they messed up with high-profile transfers, and the same fate threatens Manchester City, also because they spent more than what the competent organizations consider acceptable.And although there is no doubt that most clubs would act similarly or the same if they were in their position, there are differences, mostly due to the fact that not everyone lives in the same circumstances. A privileged minority, primarily stationed in the Premier League, is blessed with money from lucrative contracts for the sale of TV rights that allow it to operate on the transfer market while in a negative financial situation, as their coffers are being filled thanks to the global popularity of England’s championship.Watch our Ratcliffe, Qatar is out to buy United!This is only partially true for the biggest clubs from the other ‘top five’ leagues, but the next grouping consists of clubs from countries that are breathing down their necks, but are again too small to support themselves from marketing. So in Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium they had to learn how to trade. And not only them, but also Swansea, which as a member of the English second league quite unexpectedly found itself in the top 10 in terms of net earnings in the last five seasons.True, Swansea were partly forced to do so, because in the 2017/2018 season it was relegated from the Premier League to the Championship, so it had to sell out and deal with huge contracts, and the Football Observatory of the Institute for Research in Sports (CIES) made a list, starting to calculate the data from the summer of 2018. That season, the Welsh club earned as much as 51,250,000 euros from player sales (Alfie Mawson, Lukas Fabianski, Federico Fernandez…), and since it could not even come close to that amount by investing in new players – the money started to pile up.In the end, Swansea can boast that in these last five seasons they ended up with a positive tally of as much as 147,000,000 euros, which puts the Swans in ninth place on the CIES list, ahead of Braga, which accumualted 142,000,000.At the top of that list is the untouchable Benfica with an income of as much as 370,000,000 euros, which is not surprising because they sold Enzo Fernandez and Darwin Núñez for 201,000,000 euros this season alone! And there were also Joao Felix, Ruben Diaz, Ederson, Nelson Semedo, Victor Lindelof… With such deals, Benfica can afford new players, so this season they are in a “modest” positive of 157,000,000.The 300,000,000 mark was crossed only by Lille, who caught the momentum with sales of Nicolas Pepe and Victor Osimhen before everyone else, although there were other aces, starting with Rafael Leao, Mike Maignan, Gabriel Magalaes, Sven Botman, Amadou Onana and others. Enough for a profit of 308,000,000 euros.Some “usual suspects” follow. From Ajax (292,000,000), through Salzburg (287,000,000), Sporting (268,000,000) and Olympique Lyon (229,000,000) all the way to PSV Eindhoven (200,000,000) and Porto (178,000,000).Of the five non-league clubs, River Plate (118,000,000), Gent (72,000,000), Genk (66,000,000), Copenhagen (61,000,000), Boca Juniors (60,000,000), Flamengo (60,000,000), Palmeiras (57,000,000) also deserve praise… We don’t know where to rank Shakhtar from Donetsk with an income of 126,000,000 euros, because it was not really their choice, but a necessity due to the war events in the country.When we talk about the biggest spenders, it is clear that the English dominate there. And it is clear that Chelsea, after the crazy first season of the new boss Todd Boehly, is at the very top now with a minus of 749,000,000 euros in five seasons! It is true that the Blues will make serious money from TV rights, expensive tickets and marketing activities around the world, but this kind of spending really looks – at least from the point of view of us who are not used to such sums – like walking on the edge of an abbys.Because even though other Englishmen spend astronomically, Manchester United are the first after Chelsea, and they also spent “only” 670,000,000 euros in these five seasons, so 79,000,000 euros less. And United is still a club that earns more from their global popularity.Everyone else is far behind. Third are Arsenal with a cost of 544,000,000 euros, but it will all pay off if the title returns to London after 19 years. Tottenham are in the ‘minus’ of 477,000,000, and West Ham have lost 435,000,000 on transfers in five seasons. And this shows that the amount of investment does not automatically mean a sporting result, because the Hammers are now fighting for survival in the Premier League.Newcastle, with their new owners from Saudi Arabia, went on the offensive in the last two seasons, so it is already in a loss of 422,000,000 euros, Aston Villa will have to compensate 370,000,000, Wolverhampton 355,000,000, and only in ninth place on the list of spenders is the first club outside England. And who else – it is Juventus who, with all that unclear details in their financial books, are 337,000,000 euros behind, which is why they will probably be left without the Champions League and thus be forced to reverse the direction of business and start selling the most of their current players.Only in tenth place are Liverpool (-313,000,000), then Fulham (-271,000,000), and only after the returnees to the company of the Premier League, come the big Barcelona, who were crippled by very bad moves on the football market in the recent past. Hence the ‘minus’ of 257,000,000.It is also interesting that one Paris Saint-Germain – also limited by the threat of sanctions – spent 202,000,000 euros more than it earned, but that is only 10,000,000 more than what Olympique Marseille lost, while on the pitch itself it seems that the difference is many times higher.##EDITORS_CHOICE##Furthermore, we will point out that the minus of one Bayern – the biggest spender of the Bundesliga – is only 170,000,000 euros, which supports the thesis that the Germans know what they are doing with money. And that the “suspects” from Manchester City are at the bottom of the competition among English clubs, because only 128,000,000 euros “evaporated” from Etihad Stadium. Although, this is certainly a consequence of the fact that in the previous decade they sent players away aggressively. As well as the aforementioned PSG.A positive example are Real Madrid – a minus of 68,000,000 euros in five seasons. That’s how much they earn in Madrid in a month.As for other countries, Russian Zenit lost 129,000,000 euros, mostly before the start of the war with Ukraine, Fenerbahçe 60,000,000.Those who like this kind of statistics, and we are sure there are those among our readers, can view the complete list CIES made HERE.
