2024-07-25 15:57:02
France’s Ligue 1 remains the most fertile ground for Premier League clubs to find a new player
İdman.biz presents an article with a link to livesport.ru.
Manchester United’s £52million signing of Leni Joro has been a deal that has put European football on alert and on the radar, The Athletic reports.
Most observers expected the young Lille defender to join Real Madrid, but then United came into the picture, offering big money and long-term bonuses to win the battle for his signature.
It is the Premier League’s biggest summer transfer and a huge vote of confidence in such a young player, but the market United have chosen to invest so heavily in should come as no surprise.
Ligue 1, the top division of the French championship where Yoro came to prominence last season, is where the 20 Premier League clubs have collectively spent more than any other overseas league over the past decade.
Spending in the previous 10 years to this summer was £1.81 billion and is likely to exceed the £2 billion mark in the next six weeks. The number of players who have joined the Premier League from French clubs – 145 and counting – is also unrivalled.
No other European league has received more money from the Premier League through transfer fees since 2014 than France’s top flight, although Spain’s La Liga and Germany’s Bundesliga are not far behind.
La Liga used to be where Premier League clubs spent most of their money. In the 10 years from 2004/05 to 2013/14, it was the Spanish top flight that reliably received the majority of the Premier League’s transfer revenue, spending 27 percent more than France.
A further £1.76bn was spent on La Liga players in the following decade, but other countries, particularly Germany, have caught up. Bundesliga clubs sold players worth a total of £1.72bn between 2014/15 and 2023/24, with last summer recording the highest ever spend.
In a transfer window in which RB Leipzig sold Josko Guardiola to Manchester City, Christopher Nkunku to Chelsea and Dominik Szoboszlai to Liverpool, the Premier League spent a combined £378m on Bundesliga players. In fact, the total since 2018 is £1.26bn, slightly more than Ligue 1 over that shorter valuation period.
Serie A was another market that caught the Premier League’s eye last summer, receiving more than £300m in transfer fees, but it remains the least favoured of Europe’s big five leagues, with 10-year revenue of £1.48bn.
Despite all this, France still stands out in the Premier League’s overall spending charts, having been the most popular destination for purchases in four of the last nine seasons. And the early signings of the summer, particularly Yoro, suggest this is far from a passing fancy.
Despite Ligue 1 being considered to be behind rival leagues such as La Liga, the Bundesliga and Serie A in the domestic UEFA coefficient rankings, Ligue 1 continues to act as Europe’s premier talent factory. According to authoritative website Transfermarkt, Ligue 1 clubs have signed at least 10 players in 19 of the last 20 years. The total for the 2022/23 season is 22, with Premier League clubs spending more on Ligue 1 players (£312m) than Ligue 1 clubs (£153m).
There have been some costly mistakes, such as Arsenal’s £72m deal to sign Nicolas Pepe – also from Lille – in 2019, but recent seasons have seen a wave of success stories, with Gabriel (Arsenal), Bruno Guimaraes (Newcastle), William Saliba (signed by Arsenal from Saint-Etienne in 2018 but spending the next three seasons on loan at Ligue 1 clubs) and former Lille man Amadou Onana, who recently swapped Everton for Aston Villa in a £50m deal, all thriving.
The Athletic spoke to a number of people working in football to understand why Ligue 1 has become the preferred buying market for English clubs. Those who responded asked to remain anonymous, either because they did not have permission to discuss the matter or because of commercial confidentiality, but their answers were revealing.
One senior Premier League official pointed to Ligue 1’s focus on physicality and athleticism, and the potential to sign players who will improve at a rapid pace under the best coaching in England. Meanwhile, one senior agent noted the value for money Ligue 1 has traditionally offered compared to its rivals. Players there tend to fit the bill for clubs when they impress at a level that requires technical skill.
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when French football began to attract so much attention from Premier League clubs.
It may have been the influence of Eric Cantona, Manchester United’s plucky No.7 of the 1990s, or David Ginola, the brilliant Newcastle and Tottenham winger, but it was more likely to be the deeper marks left at Arsenal by their links with France, forged under Arsène Wenger.
As well as Nicolas Anelka, Emmanuel Petit and Robert Pires, there was Sylvain Wiltord and – after a short spell in Serie A – Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira. Wenger found technically gifted, physically strong players at prices far below their English equivalents. In total, 28 French players signed for the Gunners during Wenger’s 22 years in charge.
Others soon followed. Signing players from Ligue 1 – French or otherwise – made sense. Newcastle signed five players from French clubs in 2012/13 alone. That season was notable for being the first time that Premier League clubs spent more than £100m on imports from a single league. It was the year Chelsea signed Eden Hazard from Lille, Olivier Giroud left Montpellier to join Arsenal and Spurs acquired Hugo Lloris from Lyon – three big deals, but each one cementing the quality of Ligue 1 transfer targets that Premier League clubs were targeting.
French football also tends to field younger players more often, highlighting and offering all that promising potential to hopefuls from abroad. UEFA’s annual European Club Football Landscape report found that 39 percent of playing time in French domestic matches in the 2021/22 season went to players aged under 23. That made Ligue 1 the youngest of Europe’s major leagues, well below the 26 percent of minutes in the Premier League played by under-24s and 20 percent in La Liga, where English clubs’ spending has fallen sharply in recent years.
Only in the Dutch Eredivisie, another league that has been heavily targeted by English clubs in recent seasons, is the demographic noticeably younger than Ligue 1, with 47 per cent of playing time going to players under 24. In fact, by the end of that valuation period outlined in UEFA’s report, Premier League clubs had spent £240m on top-flight players in the 2022/23 season, including Anthony, Lisandro Martinez, Cody Gakpo and Noni Madueke.
The Premier League’s financial might is becoming increasingly difficult for European rivals to match, and it is Ligue 1, with its recent TV rights woes, that has become the most vulnerable. The recent domestic deal with DAZN and beIN Sports is valued at just £420m per season, a figure dwarfed by the Premier League’s total TV packages, which are worth more than £3bn a year. Ligue 1 rights have actually fallen in value since their peak in 2016/20.
Spanish, German and Italian clubs are under similar pressure, but not to the same extent as in France. Selling players has become a fundamental part of the business model, and few do it better than Lille, who sold Yoro to Manchester United last week. Lille, who finished fourth in Ligue 1 last season, have sold £250m worth of players to Premier League clubs over the past five years, including Sven Botman, Carlos Baleba, Onana, Gabriel and Pepe.
Lyon, another of the biggest names in French football, have proven equally adept. Their revenues have also exceeded £200m since 2019, with the likes of Lucas Paqueta (to West Ham), Guimaraes (Newcastle) and Tanguy Ndombele (Tottenham) sold for huge profits.
Ligue 1 still managed to record a net transfer spend of just under £30m in last summer’s transfer window, beating Serie A and La Liga, but much of this was down to the lavish spending of Paris Saint-Germain, who stood out due to the financial backing of their owners Qatar Sports Investment.
PSG are still the only French club in the top 10 of the Deloitte Money League, a list of Europe’s top clubs that generate the most revenue. Marseille are 20th in the 2024 list, Lyon 29th, but the rest of Ligue 1, especially those without the added income of European competition, could see their revenues transformed by a single successful sale. Offers from England are becoming increasingly difficult to say no to.
As a result, French football has found itself at the centre of multi-club projects. Chelsea owners BlueCo bought Strasbourg last year, while Liverpool owners FSG also recently discussed buying Bordeaux, a historically big club currently languishing in the second tier, before talks collapsed last week. The same reasons why English clubs target French players in the transfer market underlie the motivation for buying French clubs.
It’s no surprise that so many players have moved from Ligue 1 to the Premier League. Between 2004 and 2024, a total of 260 players were signed from the French top flight, more than from Spain (245), Italy (192) and Germany (171).
The average transfer fee from Ligue 1 over that time? Just under £9m.
The Premier League’s focus is widening: Germany’s Bundesliga has seen increased interest during the Covid-19 years, but Ligue 1 remains the most fertile ground for finding a new player. Yoro is the latest example.
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