Todd Boehly has received some indirect criticism as a result of his world-record transfer spending at Chelsea.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The new owner was the driving force behind a £273 million shopping binge at Stamford Bridge this summer, which was more than half of the total transfer cost in the Spanish league. Meanwhile, La Liga teams’ net spending of £45 million was overshadowed by Premier League clubs’ astonishing total of almost £1.1 billion.
It comes as the Premier League’s ever-increasing transfer fees continue to rise as premium pricing are placed on players with English teams, and the expenditure is having an impact.
Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga, has created a dossier for UEFA that criticises English spending and calls for reform and greater control.
La Liga has far stricter spending controls in place, with only Barcelona ranking among the top 20 European clubs for summer expenditure, whilst 13 Premier League clubs were on the list.
Tebas stated at a public presentation of La Liga Squad Spending Limits, “The Premier League’s income is 1.8 times that of La Liga or the Bundesliga, but the negative number is 20 times that of the Spanish league, which has excellent financial management.
“Something doesn’t add up there, so what’s going on? Cheques are flying from teams like Manchester City that sign a particular number of players. Over a five-year period, the Championship itself lost €3 billion (£2.6 billion). Capital contributions by Premier League team owners to compensate for losses in comparison to La Liga.
“La Liga had capital gains of €277 million (£242.6 million). Premier League contributions and loans total €2.38 billion (£2.08 billion). It was €1.39 billion (£1.21 billion) in the Championship. It would be reasonable to expect them to sign twice as many players, but they have spent far more than that. This can only happen if the owners get their chequebooks out, and these are different models.”
Three big in-league moves emphasised Chelsea’s investment. Marc Cucurella from Brighton cost an exaggerated £55 million with additional add-ons, while Wesley Fofana from Leicester City cost a whopping £69.5 million. Raheem Sterling’s modest £45 million fee appears even more stunning in retrospect, while Chelsea’s Boehly and co. also spent substantially in their young set-up, spending more than £40 million on adolescents.
With virtually little money coming in, Chelsea opted against selling its youth assets in general this summer, as opposed to allowing sales last summer to help pay Romelu Lukaku. Under Roman Abramovich, the final two years of expenditure totaled more than £300 million; Boehly nearly equaled that in his first window.
Although this was seen as necessary to quickly and effectively revamp the squad after years of poor decisions created a backlog of senior players on large wages, the money involved is still staggering, and Chelsea would not be in a financially stable position without the wavered £1.5billion of debt that Abramovich put into the club to fund the majority of the deals.
Boehly and Clearlake have already taken out an £800 million loan to put money towards restructuring the club as a whole, and the American group has so far put their money where their mouth is, but Tebas isn’t convinced “Do we want unsustainable models? I know the Premier League has a model to limit losses to £108 million. What happens if the owners decide not to spend the money? We may let sheiks and large corporations to come in and buy out clubs. PSG can obtain additional gas should they need to purchase more players or employ a linked company.
“The football industry has evolved, and there is now a lot more money. We may jeopardise the industry itself if there is no oversight. La Liga and the Bundesliga are the two most sustainable leagues, and we must battle for their survival.
“We weren’t like the Bundesliga ten years ago, but we are today. All of this will be presented to UEFA, and it is critical for all other European leagues if European football is to be sustained.
“Because we’ve had a pandemic, it’s hard for them to accomplish that if they don’t have donations from the owners’ chequebooks,” he continued. “If we did that in Spain, letting everything go and allowing rich individuals to acquire our teams, it would be an option, but we would prefer to maintain a viable league like the Bundesliga.
“We know what football is all about. We do not want our clubs to incur large debts in order to acquire players. This is not permitted in our league. This is the model that we are defending.”
Clubs in Europe will have little compassion for Barcelona, who aided their own financial crisis via long-term internal economic mismanagement yet still managed to sign Raphinha, Jules Kounde, and Robert Lewandowski.
