After the disappointment of the defeat in the Euro final against Italy on July 11, the footballers of the English national team began to put their boots on again during this weekend, on the occasion of the launch of the Premier League season. Among the players of the Three Lions, one will be particularly scrutinized this Sunday, August 15, around 5 p.m. in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium: Harry Kane, captain of England, will begin the clash between Tottenham and Manchester City on the bench or as holder?
The question might seem trivial if only Harry Kane weren’t Manchester City’s top priority in the transfer market. The Tottenham striker wants to leave Spurs, and the British media are talking about a transfer of 150 million euros.
The amount, which would make Kane the third most expensive player in history (behind Neymar and Mbappé when they were purchased by PSG, in 2017), is surprising in this period of crisis linked to the Covid epidemic -19. It testifies to the good financial health of English clubs, which are, without a doubt, the most active on a summer transfer market that opened on June 9.
While waiting to see Kane land at Manchester City, the reigning English champion has already recovered in his squad the darling of the English public, midfielder Jack Grealish, 25. The former Aston Villa player joined the Citizens against 117 million euros in early August.
More than 1 billion euros spent
This summer, Manchester City were not the only English club to release the checkbook. Chelsea paid 115 million euros to poach Belgian striker Romelu Lukaku, who played for Inter Milan, while Manchester United offered for 85 million euros the Englishman Jadon Sancho, who played in Germany, in Dortmund.
As a preamble to the slap inflicted on Leeds for their first game of the season (5-1), Saturday, the Red Devils also presented their new recruit, Raphaël Varane. The French international left Real Madrid to join Manchester United for 40 million euros.
This compensation has made the twenty English Premier League clubs cross the billion euros mark spent this summer on transfers. Two weeks before the end of the transfer window, this amount is lower than the amounts posted in previous seasons by the English teams: 1.6 billion euros in 2019 and 1.4 billion in 2020, according to data from the Observatory of the CIES football.
But it is much more important than the sums disbursed by the clubs of the four other major European leagues which are the Spanish Liga (138 million euros), the Italian Serie A (387 million), the German Bundesliga (326 million) and the French Ligue 1 (288 million). “Right now, you have the impression that English clubs are crushing the transfer market, as if the coronavirus had never happened”, wondered Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the former president of Bayern Munich, in an interview with Bild August 10.
Greater investment capacity
Besides English clubs, the other major player in the transfer market in Europe is Paris-Saint-Germain. The Parisian club has achieved one of the most impressive mercatos in football history, recruiting in turn the Dutchman Georginio Wijnaldum, the Spaniard Sergio Ramos, the Italian Gianluigi Donnarumma, the Moroccan Achraf Hakimi and the Argentinian Lionel Messi.
But as four of these five players were at the end of their contract, PSG did not have to pay transfer fees as high as those granted by English clubs. It must be said that the latter can rely on solid revenues provided by the television broadcasting rights of the Premier League: these were renewed in May for three years against 5 billion euros.
Some British stables are therefore spending lavishly, or almost, as if the Covid-19 epidemic and its consequences were only distant memories. In reality, disparities are growing between the big English clubs and those who prefer to hoard in this period of crisis.
Manchester City, like PSG, can rely on the almost unlimited financial capacity of its owners from the Persian Gulf. With these funds, the Citizens could make Harry Kane the most expensive English player in football history, dethroning… Jack Grealish. It remains to be seen whether the Tottenham striker will go to the clash with his club. A first element of response should appear this Sunday afternoon, on the occasion of the clash between the two clubs.