At Luton Town and Sheffield United in the Championship the €10 million (£8.3 million) net spend barrier was broken. At Como, 15th in Serie A, they spent €48 million on seven players and more on loans. At RB Leipzig, Jürgen Klopp’s first window at the head of global soccer of the Red Bull group ended with €55.5 million spent on three players. Yet in La Liga, the leading Spanish clubs finished with a trade surplus of €20 million.
The biggest deal was the €13 million signing of Cucho Hernández by Real Betis. There were no fees paid by Real Madrid or Barcelona, on the seventh anniversary of the latter’s infamous January window of 2018. That was when Barcelona bet €160 million on Philippe Coutinho, shortly after spending €150 million (£123 million) on Ousmane Dembélé the previous summer, arguably the two windows from which their fragile financial model never recovered. These days the comparisons with the Premier League’s spending power, or indeed that of the Saudi Pro League, are pointless for La Liga clubs. They are just trying to stay afloat.
Real Madrid pay their players twice a year in two six-month tranches, at the end of December and the start of July which means they come into the January window with cash at hand low. Their last results for the 2023-24 financial year showed they had €35 million in cash on December 31, and that is likely to have fallen this year. That has often dictated that the club rarely make January signings. Although there was an argument that this year, with injuries to defenders Eder Militao, Dani Carvajal, Antonio Rudiger and now David Alaba again, there might have been an exception made.
Real have switched to a model of signing big-name free agents – Trent Alexander-Arnold the obvious candidate this year. Barcelona, on the other hand, are struggling to register the players they do have. Dani Olmo, their Euro 2024-winning signing from RB Leipzig, and Pau Victor, from Girona, are only in the squad after an intervention by the Spanish minister for sport. Indeed, Liga president Javier Tebas has taken legal action against the club to overturn the decision, brokered on a temporary basis. La Liga says Barcelona’s non-compliance with its financial rules means Olmo and Victor do not come under the salary cost cap.
Which is why Manchester United were always dubious about the prospects of Barcelona signing Marcus Rashford, on loan or otherwise. The notion of the United striker, or indeed any Premier League player on his salary terms, joining Barcelona in the summer remains fanciful while the current restrictions are in place. Thus far, Barcelona’s attempts to conjure another €100 million on to the revenue sheet with another future income stream – this time VIP seats in their as-yet unbuilt Camp Nou – has not convinced the league to increase the salary budget.
La Liga has been backed in its stance by those with the most to lose by letting Barcelona slide on their obligations – the likes of Atlético Madrid, Athletic Bilbao and Sevilla. For the big two in Spain, the domestic television revenue still delivers them a strong return relative to the rest of the league. Although the €160 million both receive is equivalent to a 12th-place finish in the Premier League. Under La Liga’s distribution rules, 25 per cent is merit based, 25 per cent on historic performance, and a further 25 per cent on the nebulous metric, impact – that tries to measure the size of a club. Needless to say, Barcelona and Real have historically done well out of that.
The debt of the respective clubs, around €2 billion (£1.6 billion) for Real and €3 billion for Barcelona – including stadium costs – is another major drag. It is why Real are considering the end of their historic member-owned status in favour of a private stake being sold in the club. Where they go Barcelona are likely to follow.
Yet the deficit is palpable. Only Ligue 1 in France from the big five leagues ended with a greater trading profit than La Liga in January. Lens, turbocharged by the sale of Abdukodir Khusanov for €40 million to Manchester City, earned €46.7 million. Lyon generated almost €30 million. Stade Reims sold Emmanuel Agbadou and Marshall Munetsi to Wolves for a total of €38 million. Rennes comfortably outspent Paris St-Germain, with a net spend of €44 million, the fear of relegation for the club outstripping the worries all top-flight French clubs have over their broadcast income.
The €70 million acquisition by PSG of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia from Napoli marked the French club out as one of the few outside the Premier League capable of injecting funds into the market, although they did sell Xavi Simons to RB Leipzig for €50 million. Apart from those two clubs, all the activity was driven on the whole by the Premier League and by Saudi Arabia. It is Premier League money that drives the European market in the main, and much of it is spent throughout Europe.
The income from the wealthiest football league in the world does indeed trickle down. At the turn of the millennium, it was Real who did that, with their first major cash injection from a property deal that prefaced the €35 million signing of Nicolas Anelka in 1999 and then the era in which they broke the transfer market. Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, the original Ronaldo and David Beckham arrived in successive years. But that resource was finite, as has been the case with the sales of future income streams two decades later. In recent years, Real and Barcelona have sold major parts of future revenue – a repackaged debt instrument. The rest of La Liga have done the same with a private equity sale to CVC Capital in 2023, known as the Liga Boost.
The latter offered up-front cash to tackle urgent infrastructure costs for many clubs who have struggled in the shadow of the big two in Spain. But now, for the first time, and for their own reasons, all of Spain’s clubs have found themselves net sellers rather than net spenders.
