BBC study maps the 46 clubs that received Manchester City transfer fees
The short version
- An independent commission found Manchester City guilty of breaking financial rules; the club has appealed.
- Between summer 2009 and winter 2018, City paid transfer fees to 46 clubs across 19 national leagues.
- City spent about £1.2 billion on players in 2009-2018, roughly £900 million net — the most of any club.
- Of the 12 clubs paid the most, only Benfica and Porto won a major trophy in under four years of the sales.
- Sell-on clauses sent payments to QPR, Barnsley and Wolves without direct deals with City.
A BBC Sport review identifies 46 clubs across 19 leagues that received Manchester City transfer fees between 2009 and 2018, with mixed returns for many of the biggest recipients.
A BBC Sport study has mapped which clubs took in transfer fees from Manchester City during the years an independent commission found the club guilty of breaking financial rules. City has since confirmed an appeal against the verdicts. The review runs from the summer window of 2009 through the winter window of 2018 and identifies 46 clubs across 19 national leagues that received payments.
The commission determined that City had overstated its accounts by more than £900 million, a figure stretching well beyond player trading. Club budgets also absorb wages for players and other staff, utilities, insurance, infrastructure and commercial obligations. Even so, City committed roughly £1.2 billion to players between 2009 and 2018 — about £900 million of it net — more than any other club in that window.
The commission judged the breaches deliberate and tied the outlay to City becoming the most successful club in England, spending that would almost certainly have been far smaller had the regulations been followed. Defenders of the club, in press coverage and online, have countered that the money enriched rivals across football, above all in the Premier League. The case has also brought a call for HMRC to examine the tax implications, confirmation that the whistleblower is set to lose witness protection, and a Downing Street insistence — after a backlash to remarks by Burnham — that the club is not "above the rules."
Transfer business also generates agents' fees, legal and administrative costs and possible signing-on bonuses — money reaching behind-the-scenes figures that is hard to trace — so the analysis tracks only fees between clubs for senior players, excluding free transfers, loans and academy graduates. The former clubs of Sergio Aguero, Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva were among those collecting significant fees, and several recipients banked record sums at the time. The distribution was broad: Premier League clubs received slightly more than a quarter of City's total outlay on fees, with signings drawn from eight clubs in the English top flight and another eight in Spain's La Liga, while two players bought from the Championship cost £13 million between them.
City's readiness to meet higher fees and wages pushed prices up for the rest of the market, and a rival holding fresh City money could face steeper asking prices with no guarantee the funds would be used wisely. Wolfsburg, the highest-paid club on the list, moved quickly to spend roughly half of the 2016 Kevin De Bruyne proceeds on winger Julian Draxler and added other players, including the experienced defender Dante. The team then fell from second to eighth in the Bundesliga and survived relegation only narrowly in each of the next two seasons.
Monaco, second on the list, sold Benjamin Mendy and Bernardo Silva to City in the same summer. The signings meant to fill the gaps, Terence Kongolo and Keita Balde, did not succeed over the long term, and within two years the club had gone from a Ligue 1 title and a Champions League semi-final to battling the drop. Arsenal, which supplied more players to City than anyone else in the period with four, never launched a serious Premier League title bid during those years.
In Portugal, Benfica and Porto each collected broadly similar sums from City, while Sporting — the third member of Portuguese football's big three — received nothing and went without a title from 2009 to 2018. Of the 12 clubs paid the most by City, only those two Portuguese sides lifted a major trophy in under four years from the relevant sales.
Beyond direct deals, sell-on clauses pushed money toward clubs City never traded with. Queens Park Rangers picked up about £9 million from Raheem Sterling's 2015 move from Liverpool to City, Barnsley's cut of the fee Everton received for John Stones in 2016 came to roughly £7 million, and Everton had to forward about £2.5 million to Wolves when Joleon Lescott departed.
Manchester City hosts Arsenal on Sunday, October 4, at 11:30 a.m. EDT at Etihad Stadium, with the match streaming on Paramount+.
