Transfers are always the hottest topic over the summer for the footballing world as everyone has an opinion how much any player is worth…and then gets their expectations blown out of the water when a club spends millions more than expected. This summer alone we saw the record breaking transfer of Cristiano Ronaldo from Premier League giants to La Liga giants Real Madrid for a wallet emptying £80m pounds!

Let’s look at who is doing the spending and who is doing the buying. I was surprised by the numbers in a few cases…

Top 5 Net Spenders

2009-2010 Season

1. Spain – £206m
2. Germany – £89m
3. Turkey – £36m
4. France – £30m
5. Greece – £15m

Spain

I expected Spain to be at the top due to Real Madrid’s ridiculous spending over the summer. If somehow they didn’t manage to be tops in this category someone would forgive you for thinking that the Enron accounting staff took up jobs in La Liga. Real Madrid accounted for 73% of Spain’s net spending! And CRonaldo’s purchase was 54% of that spending!!!!

League by league: The Primera Division (let’s be honest here, basically Real and Barca) absolutely crushes Segunda in spending terms. Not surprising given the revenue structure.

Germany

Somewhat surprised to find Germany in second. Given the lack of coverage of high profile transfers to the Bundesliga. Quite a heavy net spend of £89m comparatively with other countries.

League by league: The large amount of activity in BLiga1 compared to BLiga2 suggests a large amount of foreign talent coming in. That £97m spent by the top tier certainly didn’t trickle down much with BLiga2 only bringing in £15m in transfer revenue.

Turkey

Turkey??? This one was a complete surprise. I don’t even know what large transfers would account for this. £35m is a lot relative to the size of the market for Turkish football.

League by league: Only one league

France

France had relatively light spending in comparison to the rest and relative to the market. Only £30m leaving the country.

League by league: Of the top 5 France has the smallest deficit in net spending between Top and lower leagues.

Greece

Greece??? This one was also a complete surprise. Same question and comment as for Turkey. I don’t even know what large transfers would account for this. £15m is a lot relative to the size of the market for Greek football.

League by league: Only one league

and most interestingly,

England

Who amazingly have only net spendings of £945,180 on footballers this year. I think this is as much a reflection of the financial crisis as it is on the shift of footballing talent around the world.

League by league: Even more interesting is the amount of money the Championship makes off of player transfers

Conclusions

Spain just spent the GDP of a small nation on footballers. There are some ambitious owners in Turkey and Greece and English clubs are either very conservative or just potless.

…And there’s a hell of a lot of talent in Argentina and Brazil.

Reader Questions: Who did Turkey and Greece buy to rack up such large deficits??? Respond in the comments!

All data from Transfermarkt.