How Real Madrid Spent a Billion Euros on Transfer Fees

Here’s a stat for you: Real Madrid’s total transfer spending this century has 10 digits and three commas. Marca calculates that since Florentino Perez first took over as President in the summer of 2000, the total of combined transfer fees paid out comes to a wallet-weakening 1,022,000,000 euros. That’s a billion euros. Or at least it’s a billion euros for those of us using the short scale system. In the long scale system it’s a thousand million euros. Which is still a lot of euros.

So what do you get for a billion euros? The players purchased by Real in the past decade include: Luis Figo €60m, Zinedine Zidane €72m, Ronaldo (Original) €45m, David Beckham €35m, Robinho €25m, <a href="http://players.theoffside.com/arjen-robben.html"Arjen Robben €36m, Wesley Sneijder €25m, Cristiano Ronaldo €96m, Kaka €64m and many many more. There are a few questionable purchases mixed in there, like €20m spent on an injured Jonathan Woodgate and another €20m on Julio Baptista. But Real Madrid have mostly paid big money for quality footballers.

Let’s see all that information in graph form:

I’m not judging here. The figure would be a lot less if we factored in transfer fees received for selling players and money earned from selling Real Madrid jerseys bearing names like Zidane, Beckham and either of the Ronaldos. So the point here isn’t that Real Madrid wasted a billion euros. They didn’t. The point is just to marvel at what’s been a monumental century in terms of money spent on transfer fees, with Real Madrid leading the way. So far anyway.

According to Marca, Real’s rivals Barcelona spent €713m in that same 2000-2010 period, while Chelsea spent €650m. Kerching. However, all are made to look like the sort of cheapskates who don’t order anything for dinner but then pick at the food on your plate next to Manchester City, whose new owners have already spent €400m in three seasons since taking over.

So meet me back here in two years time, and we’ll see if Man City’s semi-inevitable Champions League qualification and subsequent spending spree, plus inevitable transfer market inflation leads to Man City equalling Madrid’s billion dollar spend, but in half the time.

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Category: Spain La Liga