Manchester City have a billion-dollar squad

Premier League champions Manchester City has become the club that spent the most to assemble its squad.

According to a study by the CIES Football Observatory, a research group under the FIFA, Manchester City invested 1.14billion euros (approx. 1.3351 trillion won) on the transfers of players to create its current squad. This is 32 times higher than the amount Norwich City FC spent on transfers of players (32 million euros).

The study said Manchester City has become the first football club to spend more than 1 billion euros on transfers of players. Mansour bin Zayed, owner of Manchester City, has spent more than 2 trillion won from 2008 to create the current squad that includes striker Sergio Aguero and midfielder David Silva. The EPL Champion spent big once again before the start of this season. It signed a 70 million won (approx. 92.1 billion won) contract with Atletico Madrid midfielder Rodrigo Hernandez.

France’s Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) ranked second following Manchester City. The PSG spent a record fee of 222 million euros (approx. 292.3 billion won) to buy Brazilian football star Neymar in 2017. The French club invested a total of 913 million euros (approx. 1.2 trillion won) to assemble its current squad. Spain’s Real Madrid came in third with 902 million euros.

England’s Manchester United, now-retired Park Ji-sung’s former team, ranked 4th (751 million euros) and Cristiano Ronaldo’s Juventus came in 5th (719 million euros). South Korean ace Son Heung-min’s Tottenham Hotspur spent 12th most money on players with 465 million euros.


Yun-Cheol Jeong trigger@donga.com