Liverpool have been named as football’s biggest selling club of this decade in a new study of the transfer market since 2010.
The Premier League club has earned the most money from selling players than any other club since 2010, raising €442m (£515.7m), which is over £70m more than any other English team.
CIES Football Observatory, an academic research group, based in Switzerland, conducted this research, put the Reds comfortably ahead of their domestic rivals regarding the amount of capital raised by offloading players in recent years.
It is no surprise that most (almost a third) of the money made in the last six years has come from just three sales — Raheem Sterling to Manchester City for £49m last summer, Fernando Torres to Chelsea for £50m in January 2011 and Luis Suarez’s £79m move to Barcelona in 2014.
La Liga outfit Valencia were second behind Liverpool, £8 million shy of the Reds’ total sales.
There are only two other English clubs in the world’s top 10 sellers of the decade. In the seventh place are Tottenham, who have the sales of Gareth Bale and Luka Modric to Real Madrid to contribute to their earnings mainly. In the 10th place are Chelsea with €358m. Southampton in 15th with €268m.
It is no surprise that Southampton are placed relatively high on the table, in the 15th ranking, with €268m. The south coast side has earned a reputation for being astute in the transfer window and making significant profits on players.
Meanwhile, Manchester United find themselves way down in the 29th place, having raised just €182m in sales since 2010.
It is also worth noting that despite these figures, Liverpool currently sit on a negative net spend of €221m for the decade, as they have spent plenty on bringing in players as well. Liverpool, in fact, have been the sixth-biggest spenders in Europe’s top five leagues, above Real Madrid and Juventus but trailing behind Premier League rivals Manchester City, Chelsea and Manchester United.
This is equally not surprising because to replace the outgoing players; the club will need to buy new ones. Liverpool have had a history of spending on young players in recent years. They have also often not bought wisely. After selling Luis Suarez to Barcelona, the Reds bought a host of players, many of whom didn’t do well, including £20m signing Lazar Markovic. Mario Balotelli was equally a flop, and last summer Christian Benteke was bought for £32.5 million but wasn’t favourable to Klopp’s style of play. Liverpool did manage to recuperate all they spent on him.
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