European clubs’ big spending only goes so far to matching Premier League’s quality

The sale of Luis Suarez from Liverpool to Barcelona for a fee of £75 million (Dh459.9m) last month followed a familiar pattern.
The previous summer, Gareth Bale joined Real Madrid for £85m from Tottenham Hotspur. Four years earlier, Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United and signed with Real Madrid for £80m.
The biggest players in the world game keep leaving the Premier League, which, for a competition that prides itself on being the best in the world and generates £3 billion annually in revenue, seems odd.
Odd, though, is not the same as bad, and it is worth unpacking the figures a little.
To begin with, expensive does not necessarily equal effective. The highest fee paid by an English club was the £50m Chelsea delivered to Liverpool for Fernando Torres in January 2011, the 12th-highest figure of all time.
Some 110 Premier League games later, he has scored just 20 goals for the London side and his departure for a knockdown price has been expected for a couple of seasons, though it has yet to materialise.
Manchester City fans might think that Carlos Tevez, bought for a reported £47m in 2009, was worth it given that his time at the club helped bring an FA Cup and a league title to the club, but he also brought a load of acrimony thanks to his spat with former manager Roberto Mancini.
Mesut Ozil, Sergio Aguero and Juan Mata may yet prove worth their fees all between £35m and £40m. Yet Andy Carroll certainly never justified the £35m Liverpool paid to bring him from Newcastle as Torres's replacement on a crazily inflated transfer deadline day in January 2011.
Then there is the question of who is paying the inflated fees. Of the 10 richest transfers of all time, six were signed by Real Madrid.
This is simply part of their strategy, and has been since the 1950s. They buy the most glamorous and best players, hope their coach can somehow cobble together a coherent side, and bask in the aura the galacticos give them.
Given that they have won only three Primera Liga titles and one Uefa Champions League in the last decade, fans could argue it has not been a hugely successful policy.
Then again, in 2013, Real Madrid topped Deloitte's money league for football clubs, bringing in €512.6m (Dh2.5 trillion). From that point of view, the plan has worked brilliantly.
Of course, Real Madrid's position in the money league works both ways. The fact they can negotiate their television rights on an individual basis, rather than having to share fees with the rest of the league – as is the case in the Premier League – gives them greater commercial power.
Second in the money league were Barcelona, who, for all their reputation for developing youth players through the cantera, are responsible for the third- (Suarez), sixth- (Zlatan Ibrahimovic) and 13th- (Neymar) most expensive transfers in history.
The other two of the 10 highest fees in history were paid by Paris Saint-Germain in the signings of Edinson Cavani and David Luiz. Again, there is a specific context.
PSG, now one of the wealthiest teams in the world thanks to Qatari Sports Investment, are a club without a storied history. Their way of convincing players, agents and fans that they are a major force is by spending a lot of money.
There is one nation that plays a notably small role in the list of the highest transfers – Germany.
Bayern Munich have arguably been the dominant force in European football during the past three or four years, yet they appear on the list just once, with the signing of Javi Martinez for £31.6m in 2013.
In part, that is because of their domination of the German market. They tend already to have picked up the best players before they reach a level of fame, but that also reinforces the point that expensive and good are not necessarily the same thing. For many German clubs, in fact, spending money seems to be seen as a sign of failure.
What is also telling is the pattern that emerges below the top 10. Although Barca and Real mop up the very best, 17 of the 50 heftiest fees have been paid by English clubs, and only 16 by Spanish, with Italian and French clubs both on seven. Of those 16 fees, all but one has been paid by either Real Madrid or Barca, whereas England has five clubs on the list.
That hints at another significant issue: the level of competition in England. The trend of the rich getting richer seems inevitable, but at least the collective bargaining of the Premier League ensures some measure of competitive balance.
Half of television revenues are divided equally between the 20 Premier League clubs, with the other half distributed according to league position and the number of times a side's games are broadcast.
That, allied to the extraordinary investment in Manchester City and Chelsea, means there are effectively five teams who could challenge for the Premier League title, and Tottenham could become a sixth.
The contrast with other major leagues is striking. Even with Monaco's investment and the arrival of Marcelo Bielsa at Marseille, France is a one-horse race.
The only question in Germany is when Bayern will win the Bundesliga. It would be a major surprise if Juventus failed to win Serie A.
In Spain, although there was an enormous shock last season when Atletico Madrid lifted the championship, they have been stripped of Diego Costa, Filipe Luis and Thibaut Courtois. It sets up as another battle between Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Is the Premier League the best league in the world? It depends on your criteria. If you want to see the most glamorous players, watch Real Madrid and Barcelona. But if you want a title race with more than two runners, the Premier League wins, hands down.
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