The 25 most expensive squads in world football ranked - Man Utd 3rd

Money has never been more prevalent in the beautiful game than in it is right now.

The 21st century has seen several enormously rich owners pump hundreds of millions, billions even, into footballing clubs in pursuit of on-pitch glory.

First it was Florentino Perez, the wealthy Spanish construction tycoon who revolutionised Real Madrid with his Galacticos project.

Next came Roman Abramovich, the Russian that transformed Chelsea from a decent Premier League club to a consistent Premier League force.

More recently, the Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City owners have pioneered the charge as football’s biggest investors – and it seems Newcastle could be set to be next.

But with so much money in football now, and so much investment required to reach the very top, we thought it would be worth looking up which clubs were in fact Europe’s biggest spenders.

The research – which looks at the purchase value of all transfer fees that a club has spent on existing squad players – has provided us with the list of Europe’s 25 most expensive rosters.

All figures are courtesy of Transfermarkt.

25. RB Leipzig (cost of squad €229.03m)

24. AC Milan (€242.62m)

23. Bayer Leverkusen (€248.55m)

22. Monaco (€262.20m)

21. Wolves (€270.20m)

20. West Ham (€271.15m)

19. AS Roma (€283.40m)

18. Tottenham (€290.15m)

17. Napoli (€291.13m)

16. Aston Villa (€302.07m)

15. Borussia Dortmund (€307.60m)

14. Newcastle (€318.25m)

13. Leicester (€351.82m)

12. Everton (€355.15m)

11. Bayern Munich (€380.50m)

10. Barcelona (€437.90m)

9. Atletico Madrid (€461.15m)

8. Arsenal (€481.70m)

7. Real Madrid (€529.50m)

6. Juventus (€540.00m)

5. Liverpool (€610.95m)

4. Chelsea (€649.80m)

3. Manchester United (€769.93m)

2. Paris Saint-Germain (€832.90m)

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