Strong financial resources to help English clubs buy the Champions League

Can money buy success? Those who don’t believe me, think again.

The owners of the most expensive team in world football will know when Chelsea will face Manchester City in the UEFA Champions League final this Saturday.

Winning the biggest honor of European club football will be the ultimate reward for billionaire supporters, who have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in building teams and football businesses.

The Russian-Israeli tycoon Roman Abramovich, who bought Chelsea in 2003, hopes to repeat the mistakes of 2012. This is the club’s first and only victory in the game.

At the same time, under the control of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE, after Manchester City won the Premier League title for the third time in four years, Hope to win the club’s first Champions League trophy. Since they took the helm, the two owners have spent a total of approximately £1.6 billion on players sold.

Saturday’s game only marked the third Champions League final between two English clubs.

Although the first two All England finals-2008 and 2019-were separated by more than ten years, only two years after the last Premier League, the other two Premier League teams entered the finals of Europe’s top competitions.

The analysis of the British “Financial Times” on the Deloitte Football Fortune List shows that among the top 15 teams in Europe, the average income of English clubs in 9 of the past 16 seasons was higher than that of their mainland counterparts. And the dominance of the Premier League is increasing. Supported by the league’s global appeal and billions of pounds in broadcast revenue, English clubs have surpassed their European competitors in six of the past seven seasons.

Kieran Maguire, a lecturer in football finance and accounting at the University of Liverpool, said: “England clubs, especially those with benevolent bosses willing to invest on the pitch, do have a potential advantage over other European clubs.” The agreement gives it a huge advantage among other UEFA countries competing for the European trophy.”

During the epidemic Losses up to 8.1 billion euros The income of the top European clubs in the past two seasons has restricted many transfer markets, and Manchester City and Chelsea have not been constrained.

According to data from the website Transfermarkt.com, Chelsea has spent more than £220 million this season to strengthen the team’s squad, which is roughly equivalent to the sum of Barcelona and Juventus-ranking third and fourth in the transfer spending list.

Manchester City invested 150 million pounds in new players, including 68 million euros from Portugal’s Benfica defender Ruben Diaz and 23 million euros midfielder Ferran Torres, who scored in six Champions League matches 4 goals were scored.

The analysis found that Chelsea is the only club with a net sales of more than 100 million pounds, while Manchester City’s price of 97 million pounds is lower than this figure. In contrast, Germany’s Mönchengladbach also participated in the UEFA Champions League this season, spending only £12 million on new signings, and leaving the team without any income-about 13 times less than the North England club.

But expensive signings are not the only reason for performance on the court. The investment in the training academy helps ensure that Chelsea and Manchester City have on average younger players than many opponents in terms of team value. According to Transfermarkt, the 20-year-old Phil Foden of Manchester City is an academy graduate. He has so far participated in all 12 games, scored three goals, and is worth 72 million pounds. And Chelsea’s Mason Mount is two years older than him. He scored two goals in 10 games and is worth 67.5 million pounds.

In general, these high-value young players affected the performance of the club and kept the team young. The median age of Manchester City and Chelsea is 27 years old, significantly younger than Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus of Italy. Although among the top 10 European clubs by income, Barcelona has the lowest median age-the first team is only 24 years old.

The Champions League finalists are also the team’s most valuable players, with an average market value of approximately £30 million. In contrast, the players of Paris Saint-Germain are worth up to 144 million pounds, and the average value of their players is only half of the latter-lower than any English club that participated in this year’s competition.

On paper, Manchester City is a stronger team. UEFA ranked Manchester club third and Chelsea ranked 12th in Europe. At home, Manchester City regained the Premier League title from Liverpool and kept the League Cup trophy. Chelsea lost to the FA Cup final, another domestic championship trophy, and ranked fourth in the league.

But since the London club hired Thomas Tuchel (the former Paris Saint-Germain coach) to replace Frank Lampard in the 2020 final against Bayern Munich in January, Chelsea’s results have As a result, the club was in ninth place at the time. Tuchel’s task was to prevent Manchester City’s super coach Guardiola from becoming the fourth coach to win the Champions League three times.

Recent evidence shows that Chelsea have the ability to upset, beating Manchester City twice in domestic competitions in the past two months.

“We know that anything can happen in the finals. Luck is an important part, and its psychological approach-who can handle the pressure and small details well,” Tuchel said this week“Man City is the benchmark, they are champions again, we are the ones who want to hunt them down and want to close the gap.”

Additional reporting by Chris Campbell