Chelsea's 2024 squad most expensive ever in Europe, says UEFA report

MANCHESTER, England : Chelsea's squad at the end of the 2024 financial year was the most expensive ever assembled in Europe in terms of transfer fees, according to a report released by governing body UEFA.

The "European Club Finance and Investment Landscape" report said Chelsea spent 1.656 billion euros ($1.79 billion) on combined transfer costs.

That comfortably surpassed the value of Manchester United's squad in 2023, which cost 1.42 billion euros to assemble, and the 1.33 billion euros spent by Real Madrid, which was the highest squad cost in 2020.

Chelsea have signed 41 players since Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital bought the club in 2022, but the west London club's big-money transfers have not translated to significant on-field success, as Chelsea finished sixth in the Premier League last season and are currently fifth.

According to the report which analyses all of Europe's top divisions, Real Madrid (1,073 million euros), Manchester City (854 million euros), Paris St Germain (808 million euros), Manchester United (771 million euros) and Bayern Munich (765 million euros) had the highest revenues in 2023.

The Premier League had nine teams among the top-20 earning clubs, with an average revenue of 357 million euros and approximate aggregate revenue of 7.15 billion euros.

Spain's LaLiga was second with revenues of 3.7 billion euros, with Germany's Bundesliga (3.6 billion euros), Italy's Serie A (2.9 billion euros) and France's Ligue 1 (2.4 billion euros) rounding out the top five.

The top 20 clubs have been relatively stable across the last decade, with all of the current top 20 featuring in the top 25 in 2014.

English clubs reported just over 7.1 billion euros of revenue in 2023, but the size of the top clubs meant the mean