In betting the house on 19-year-old AS Monaco forward Anthony Martial, Manchester United have emphasized the English Premier League’s standing as the financial ogre of European soccer.
United’s decision to gamble a reported £36 million (US$55.1 million) on a player with only 52 league games to his name has sparked incredulity on both sides of the Channel.
British tabloid the Sun rechristened the 20-time English champions “MADchester United,” while the Times said the deal — a world-record for a teenage player — was “the latest sign of panic buying at Old Trafford.”
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In France, the focus has centered on reports that the eventual fee could rise to a staggering 80 million euros (US$90.2 million), which would make Martial, in the words of L’Equipe’s front-page headline, “More expensive than Zidane.”
According to financial consultants Deloitte, the deal took the gross spending of England’s top-flight clubs to a new record of £870 million, beating the previous mark for a single transfer window of £835 million, which was set last year.
Buoyed by the announcement earlier this year of a new domestic television rights deal worth £5.14 billion for the period from next year to 2019, English clubs have spent more lavishly than ever before.
And with a new global TV rights package set to be announced early next year, experts expect total rights-related income to exceed £8 billion.
“Today it’s the English clubs, and no one else, who make the market,” says French soccer agent Christophe Mongai, whose client Jordan Amavi joined Aston Villa from OGC Nice last month. “No one can compete, except for the top five or six clubs in Europe.”
Including the arrival of Martial, Louis van Gaal has now overseen a quarter of a billion pounds in transfer spending since succeeding David Moyes as United manager last year.
Meanwhile, Manchester City have spent close to £160 million in the current window alone, including eye-watering deals for Kevin de Bruyne, Raheem Sterling and Nicolas Otamendi.
“What we’re seeing with the likes of Manchester United, and to a lesser extent Chelsea, is they’re buying talent with a view to maximizing its potential in the future,” Sheffield Hallam University soccer finance expert Rob Wilson said. “What they’re finding is the players that they might have gone for, these ‘marquee’ signings, the values for those are so wildly inflated that they’re beginning to look elsewhere.”
“The headlines make it sound like a huge, huge deal, but in the context of Manchester United, it’s not wildly outside what they might normally expect to play for emerging talent,” he said. “Go back to Wayne Rooney: 10 years ago now, they paid around £27 million. Comparably, Wayne Rooney cost much more than Martial will cost, because it was 10 years ago and we have price inflation and you have a much smaller TV deal and much smaller revenues at all these clubs.”
While big-money arrivals at United, City and Chelsea have long been the norm, it is the sight of Yohan Cabaye in Crystal Palace’s colors or Xherdan Shaqiri lining up for Stoke City that hammer home England’s financial might.
The structure of the Premier League’s TV deals means that money is shared evenly across the division and English clubs are also reaping the rewards of slick commercial operations.
United’s new kit deal with German sportswear firm Adidas is worth £750 million, on top of several commercial contracts including a £330 million sponsorship agreement with US car giant Chevrolet.
“We’ve seen in recent years tremendous commercial growth from the largest clubs and that’s helping fuel some of this transfer spending,” Alex Thorpe of Deloitte’s Sports Business Group said.
European governing body UEFA’s financial fair play (FFP) rules have clipped English clubs’ wings in recent years, with City’s spending last year having notably been restricted.
However, with UEFA indicating that it will soften its stance regarding FFP and with revenues in English soccer continuing to soar, the Premier League looks set to boss the transfer market for years to come.
“As it stands, it’s likely that this is a trend that will continue,” Thorpe said. “The objective [of FFP] is to balance revenues with costs and if the revenues in the Premier League continue to increase as they are, that is going to give clubs greater scope to invest in their playing squads.”
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