Sport
Premier League increasing power in wake of European Super League flop
There isn’t a ‘Big Six’ club in the Premier League that has failed to make at least one big-money signing this summer. While Chelsea and Manchester City have both broken their club transfer record with the capture of Romelu Lukaku and Jack Grealish respectively, Arsenal (Ben White), Liverpool (Ibrahima Konate), Manchester United (Jadon Sancho and Raphael Varane) and Tottenham Hotspur (Cristian Romero) have also made significant moves of their own.,
This is on top of the hundreds of millions spent elsewhere in the Premier League. Aston Villa have spent £95m on Leon Bailey, Emi Buendia and Danny Ings, Leicester City have added Patson Daka and Boubakary Soumare for a combined £50m with even newly promoted Norwich City splashing around £45m on host of new signings including Milot Rashica, Josh Sargent and Pierre Lees Melou.
Elsewhere in European football, though, it has been a rather more subdued summer. This is illustrated best by the lack of activity by the continent’s biggest clubs. Of the six non-Premier League clubs originally signed up to the ill-fated Super League, none have paid over £28m for a single player this summer.
Real Madrid have yet to spend a penny, such is their financial fragility while Barcelona are so cash-strapped that they had no choice but to watch Lionel Messi leave as a free agent, unable to sign the Argentine to a new contract due to La Liga salary cap regulations.
The story isn’t much different in Italy, where AC Milan, Inter and Juventus are all scraping around the bargain bin for new signings ahead of the 2021/22 season. This is in stark contrast to the Premier League where money, even amidst the financial squeeze of the Covid-19 pandemic, appears to be no object.
While the disparity between the Premier League and the rest of European football has been clear for some time, this summer has laid bare the true nature of that disparity. We are now seeing why so many of the continent’s biggest clubs viewed the European Super League as a route to their salvation. Without it, there is no real hope of the gulf being bridged any time soon.
Of course, many of these continental clubs only have themselves to blame for the situation they have ended up in. Barcelona overreached by handing too many of their players inflated, long-term contracts over a number of years with the club’s wages-to-revenue ratio charted at 115% last season.
Real Madrid spent themselves into a similar position, although club president Florentino Perez would surely argue the €600m redevelopment of the Santiago Bernabeu has been a major factor in their recent financial struggles. Nonetheless, there is a thread of recklessness that connects so many of Europe’s biggest clubs – see how Inter have been forced to sell key players to balance the books.
Football often works in cycles. While Premier League clubs enjoyed a period of continental dominance towards the end of the 2000s, this was followed by a period of great success for the La Liga contingent with some Bundesliga glory almost mixed in there. Now, though, the Premier League could cement its place as Europe’s predominant division for a generation.
Unless there is a fundamental restructuring of the sport at the elite level, the current power dynamic will continue to weight things in favour of England’s biggest clubs. They will continue to spend the most money, hoard the best players and, unless Paris Saint-Germain can use Qatari oil money to keep up, claim most of the silverware. There will be more summers like this one.
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