Benfica was the seventh club outside the five major leagues that spent the most on the construction of the current squad, with a total investment of 188 million euros (ME), according to a study released this Wednesday by the Football Observatory (CIES) .
Rivals FC Porto and Sporting occupy 11th and 12th places in the list of clubs outside the 5 big who invested the most in the current group of players, with a value of 152 ME and 151 ME, respectively, in a classification dominated by English teams.
Of the top 10 clubs, eight are in the Premier League, including the three that spent the most on building their existing squads in the 2023/24 season, all above €1,000: Manchester United (€1,150), Chelsea (€1,134 ) and Manchester City (1042 ME), English and European champions.
Paris Saint-Germain, which reached exactly one thousand ME and occupies fourth place, and Real Madrid, eighth, with 708 ME invested, are the ‘intruders’ on the list drawn up by the CIES, which looks like a carbon copy of the English championship .
Arsenal (fifth, with 836 ME), Tottenham (sixth, with 829 ME), Liverpool (seventh, with 770 ME), Newcastle (ninth, with 661 ME) and West Ham (tenth, with 505 ME), complete the top 10according to a valuation that adds fixed and variable transfer values depending on the objectives, regardless of whether they have been met or not.
Of the 20 Premier League clubs, only the recently promoted Lutton is not part of the Football Observatory hierarchy, followed by the Italian League, with 15 teams, the Spanish League, with 12, the French and German Leagues, both with 11 .
Outside of the five most important leagues, Al Hilal, a Saudi club coached by the Portuguese Jorge Jesús, was the one that spent the most in the current batch of footballers, with 382 ME, followed by Leicester, with 281 ME, one of the three teams of the English Second League, which is on the CIES list, along with Southampton and Leeds.
The championship clubs are ahead of the three big Portuguese clubs, which in the general classification occupy substantially more modest positions: Benfica is in 45th place, while FC Porto is in 51st and Sporting in 52nd.
By sectors, Liverpool spent the most on hiring current goalkeepers, worth 73 ME, while Manchester United invested the most in defense (383 ME), Real Madrid in the midfield (447 ME) and PSG in attack (557 ME).
Source: TSF
