Manchester City would need to sell more than 1.1m replica shirts to recoup the transfer fee they paid for Jack Grealish, apparently.
Some weird and wonderful research that landed in my inbox from TicketGum.com has plotted the summer’s biggest transfer movements and then compared the transfer fees to the amount it would cost to buy a replica shirt with said player’s name and number on the back.
It ignores the fact entirely that clubs rarely make anything on their replica shirt sales, given that the kit manufacturers like Adidas and Nike pay extortionate amounts for the rights up front and thus recoup that back from sales themselves, but we’ll brush past that as the researchers have done.
Of course, the more shirts a club sells, the more attractive it makes itself for its next kit deal – so signing a headline player is more of an investment, than something they can cover with revenue straight away.
Here’s the table anyway:
|
Rank |
Player Name |
New Club/Team |
Transfer Fee Paid (£ – GBP/ € – EUR) |
Amount of the Players Official Replica Jersey that Needs to be Sold to Recoup the Transfer Fee Paid |
|
1. |
Jack Grealish | Manchester City |
£100M / €106M |
1,176,471 |
|
2. |
Jadon Sancho | Manchester United |
£73M / €79M |
913,071 |
|
3. |
Romelu Lukaku | Chelsea |
£97.5M / €103.5M |
812,839 |
|
4. |
Achraf Hakimi | Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) |
£51.3M / €57.3M |
675,000 |
|
5. |
Ben White | Arsenal |
£50M / €56M |
588,235 |
|
6. |
Cristian Romero | Tottenham Hotspur |
£42.5 / €48.5M |
500,000 |
|
7. |
Emiliano Buendía | Aston Villa |
£33M / €39M |
458,333 |
|
8. |
Raphaël Varane | Manchester United |
£35M / €41M |
437,774 |
|
9. |
Dayot Upamecano | Bayern Munich |
£37M / €43M |
435,294 |
|
10. |
Ibrahima Konaté | Liverpool |
£36M / €42M |
423,779 |
|
11. |
Martin Ødegaard | Arsenal |
£30M / €36M |
352,941 |
|
12. |
Rodrigo de Paul | Atlético Madrid |
£29.9M / €35.9M |
351,972 |
|
13. = |
Danny Ings | Aston Villa |
£25M / €31M |
347,222 |
|
13. = |
Leon Bailey | Aston Villa |
£25M / €31M |
347,222 |
|
14. |
Eduardo Camavinga | Real Madrid |
£34.4M / €40.4M |
333,981 |
|
15. |
Daniel James | Leeds United |
£25M / €31M |
333,333 |
|
16. |
Kurt Zouma | West Ham United |
£25.8M / €31.8M |
322,500 |
|
17. |
Nikola Vlasic | West Ham United |
£25.7M / €31.7M |
321,250 |
|
18. |
Donyell Malen | Borussia Dortmund |
£25M / €31M |
308,642 |
|
19. |
Aaron Ramsdale | Arsenal |
£24M / €30M |
282,352 |
|
20. |
Matheus Cunha | Atlético Madrid |
£22M / €28M |
258,976 |
It is surely particularly ambitious to think that Arsenal will sell anywhere near 282,000 Aaron Ramsdale jerseys.
Some big transfers of the summer, including Tammy Abraham’s move from Chelsea to Roma, weren’t included as the researchers couldn’t find the price of a replica jersey with their name on.
So, it’s no surprise that the biggest transfer fee of the summer requires the most number of shirts to be sold…
It does, however, highlight how expensive Manchester United shirts are in comparison to Chelsea.
