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Wages are a major driver of success on the pitch

The Swiss Ramble takes a typically forensic look at wages in the top five European leagues.

Wages are by no means the only driver of performance for clubs, but this is clearly one of the most important factors. Money on its own cannot buy success, but it sure helps in the world of football. There have been “exceptions to the rule”, though not many in recent years.

In England the highest wage bill in 2019/20 was Manchester City £351m, followed by Liverpool £326m, Manchester United £284m, Chelsea £283m, Arsenal £225m and Tottenham Hotspur £181m.

In Spain FC Barcelona £389m and Real Madrid £332m lead the way. There is a significant drop to Athletico Madrid £199m, then another large gap to Sevilla £109m.

In Germany the FC Bayern £298m wage bill was by far the highest, over £100m more than the closest challenger BVB £189m, followed by RB Leipzig £129m and Bayer Leverkusen £123m.

It’s a similar story in Italy, where the Juventus £249m wage bill is significantly higher than the rest of Serie A. The next highest is Inter £174m, followed by AC Milan £141m, AS Roma £136m and Napoli £123m, then a big gap to Atalanta £61m.

In France PSG’s £363m wage bill represents 29% of the entire  Ligue 1 payroll, an astonishing £247m more than the next highest, Lyon £116m. There are only two other clubs with wages above £100m, namely Monaco £106m and Marseille £104m. 12 clubs are below £50m.

By and large, Premier League clubs have higher wage bills than the other European leagues, though there are two Spanish clubs and one French club in the top four overall. Outside of England each country usually features 1-2 clubs with a significant wages advantage over the others.

The strength of the English Premier League is evident when looking at average wage bills, where each club paid £162m on average. This was at least £72m more than La Liga £90m and Serie A £88m, while being over twice as much as the Bundesliga £72m and Ligue 1 £62m. If we rank clubs from the Big Five leagues by wage bill, the Premier League has no fewer than nine of the top 20.

There are another 10 Premier League clubs in the rankings from 21 to 40, which means that almost half of the top 40 European clubs in terms of wages come from England. In contrast, Ligue 1 has only four clubs in the top 40 (La Liga five, Serie A five and the Bundesliga seven).

However, the wages distribution in the Premier League is the most equitable with the top club paying only 4.5 times the amount of the bottom club. The differential is much higher in the other leagues with Ligue 1 “leading the way” (22x), followed by La Liga (17x).

All leagues have a huge wages gap between their elite and the rest, as evidenced by the differences between the third placed and bottom club, which is at least £90m (Ligue 1). The gap is most pronounced in the Premier League at £206m, though the ratio is smallest (3.6x).

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