Window of records – Newspaper Kommersant No. 19 (7464) of 02.02.

The next winter transfer window surprised not so much with the activity of the “big European five” clubs on the market, but with the concentration of this activity. Three-quarters of the spending of the leading leagues fell on the English Premier League (EPL), and in it, in turn, Chelsea, scattering money under new owners to the right and left, stood out too much, spending almost € 330 million on newcomers, and before closing, committed a record deal for the Premier League, having bought Argentine midfielder Enzo Fernandez from Benfica for €121 million.

On the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, the winter transfer window closed in the leading European leagues, the results of which turned out to be rather curious. At least this is the case when the numbers and sensations are misleading and require detailed decoding.

The simplest conclusion that, looking at them, I would like to draw is that the football market, which has recovered from the consequences of the coronavirus, has become more active again, and the World Cup in Qatar, which ended in December, has become, as is often the case with top tournaments, an additional growth driver. In any case, many of its participants were among those involved in the transfer news.

So, in January 2022, the Big Five clubs invested in players, according to Transfermarkt, € 741.4 million, in January 2023 – € 1.1 billion.

But not everything is so obvious. This transfer window struck primarily by the concentration of market activity. In fact, the spending of the four “big five” leagues – Spanish, German, Italian and French – turned out to be even slightly lower than a year ago, and the World Cup, with its abundance of surprises and newly revealed players, did not, in fact, have any effect on them. influence. The difference was made by a single championship, the most powerful financially. In January 2022, the Premier League was also the clear leader in transfer spending. But if then they amounted to €345.5 million, now they have jumped up to €829.8 million. This is 76% of the total expenses of the entire five.

Emphasizes the leadership of the Premier League and such a fact. In the ten most expensive transfers in January, there is only one, the buyer of which is a team representing another championship. This is the French Marseille, who bought Vitinha from the Portuguese Braga. Thanks to him, the Marseillais managed to wedge themselves into the top ten clubs that spent the most money on the winter market. He is in eighth place, and the rest are occupied by English clubs. In general, the complete dominance of the Premier League. But this thesis also requires serious clarification.

Inside the nuclear submarine, too, there is a monstrous concentration. Back in the summer of 2022, after the sale of Chelsea by Roman Abramovich to a consortium led by American Todd Boehley, the new owners shocked English football experts with the generosity with which they made personnel adjustments. But what happened in January had an even more powerful effect.

As a rule, clubs are much more restrained during the winter transfer window than during the summer one. Chelsea, which already thoroughly shook up the squad in 2022, managed to enter the list of rare exceptions to the rule.

He set a world record for spending during the season, spending €611.5m on 16 players over two windows, according to Transfermarkt. More than half of that, €329.5m, was in January. In this sense, Chelsea’s closest pursuer is Southampton, whose investment of €63.25 million looks very modest against the backdrop of London investments. And less than Chelsea spent all the teams in the elite divisions of Spain, Germany, Italy and France combined.

It was a crazy month for the club’s management, during which he acquired eight players (Malo Gusteau, however, was immediately returned to Lyon on loan), and also gave Jorginho, recently considered a key midfielder, to Arsenal.

Five of these transitions are in the top ten most expensive, two stand apart even inside it. This winter, none of the giants dared to pay more than €50 million for players. Chelsea took the risk of buying from Shakhtar for €70 million (this figure is indicated by Transfermarkt, although some sources suggest that, taking into account bonuses, it is €100 million) half a year ago, the little-known Ukrainian winger Mikhail Mudryk, and literally in the last hours of the window, he made a very grandiose deal. Almost all leading media resources agree that the cost of transferring the Argentine midfielder Enzo Fernandez to the London team from the Portuguese Benfica amounted to €121m (or £107m). This is an English record, absolute, and not just winter. The former has been in place since 2021, when Manchester City bought Jack Grealish from Aston Villa for £100m.

In fact, we are talking about almost a unique business case. Enzo Fernandez moved to Benfica from River Plate in August 2022 at a cost of only €10 million – the price of an almost ordinary player. But within a few months, Fernandez’s quotes have undergone a radical transformation. First, thanks to successful performances for Benfica. And at the end of the year there was a real take-off. Enzo Fernandez, who celebrated his 22nd birthday two weeks ago, was able to gain a foothold in the base of the Argentina national team at the Qatari World Cup, made a huge contribution to its triumph and was recognized as the best young player of the tournament.

Now that he has converted his prizes into a contract with the football giant, the main topics of discussion in the British press boil down to the inevitable financial fair play difficulties that await Chelsea in the future (after all, the International Football Federation decided to end the evasion with through the “amortization” of the value of players through long-term contracts, so loved by the Londoners), as well as to disputes about whether the January injections will help the club get out of the crisis. And it’s terribly deep. In the English Premier League, Chelsea is languishing in tenth place, and the game shows such that it seems like he is throwing huge money away during transfer campaigns.

However, BBC expert Guillem Balague is convinced that the Londoners are unlikely to have lost Enzo Fernades and that the Argentinean, who “can play in any position in midfield”, who ideally “gives the last and penultimate passes”, who does not get lost in conditions of “increased pressure” , possibly “worth even more” €121 million.

Alexey Dospekhov