Paris Saint-Germain has always had the reputation, which it has honored, of being a club that buys much better than it sells. In its latest study, the CIES Football Observatory confirms this in figures.
Studying “the monetary balance sheet of transfer operations which concerned players not from the training center both recruited since 2015 and in the meantime definitively sold”, understand the players bought and sold excluding players trained at the club on the market over the period and of which the clubs are therefore no longer owners, Paris is quite simply the world’s dunce’s cap.
In total, since 2015, Paris has purchased players worth 1.07 billion euros which it subsequently sold on the transfer market. Only one club has drawn the bank card more: Chelsea, with 1.13 billion euros squandered. But with only 420 million euros in sales, Paris has therefore posted a deficit of 646 million euros on the transfer market for 9 years. The equivalent of a little less than a year of turnover for the club, which generated 800 million euros in 2022-2023.
Small, pro du trading
Two other clubs have more than 500 million euros in negative balance: Manchester United (-584 million) and Chelsea (-580 million). Barcelona (-368 million), Tottenham (-311 million) and Arsenal (-275 million) follow. For Paris, two transfers are particularly responsible for this negative balance: “almost half linked to the Kylian Mbappé (-€180 million) and Neymar (-€132m) operations”, writes the CIES. The Frenchman was recruited for 180 million euros and left free, the Brazilian bought for 222 million euros and sold for 90.
Conversely, Lille is the best student in this category: the Mastiffs, who have made a specialty of trading of players, present a positive balance sheet of 384 million euros, with 618 million euros in sales and 234 million in expenses.
Four French clubs are among the ten which recorded the most revenue from transfers covered by the study: Monaco (1st, €766 million), Lille (4th, €618 million), Lyon (7th, €498 million) and Rennes (9th, €425 million). Also note the presence of clubs like Angers (+€101 million), Lorient (+€80 million), Strasbourg, Reims and Lens (+€76 million) among the good students. Marseille (-€66 million) is the only French club to be among the worst performers alongside PSG.
