The value of Manchester City’s squad has plummeted by over £350million due to the coronavirus pandemic, it has been claimed.
The deadly virus has caused huge damage to the global economy as well as destroying lives and forcing a social lockdown across the planet.
And that has impacted football in many ways, with the season grinding to a halt, leading to uncertainty over finances – and new figures say that City have been harder hit than any other club in the world.
The way it will affect players’ contracts is also up in the air, as the season could now re-start beyond the end of the usual contract expiry date of June 30 – which means stars like David Silva will, unless new deals are agreed, no longer be contracted to play.
It also means that the value of players like City’s Leroy Sane, who is out of contract in 2021, has decreased dramatically.
It could also affect the value of the players who are contracted until 2022, a bracket into which John Stones, Nicolas Otamendi and Sergio Aguero all fall.
Sane was being hunted by German giants Bayern Munich before he suffered a knee ligament injury which kept him out for seven months of the stalled season, with City adamant that any bidding would start at around £130million.
The fact he will soon be just 12 months from the end of his contract has caused a huge drop in his value. When he suffered the injury, in the Community Shield win over Liverpool, the valuation of the 24-year-old by the CIES Football Observatory was around £126million just behind City’s own reckoning.
But Sane is now said to be worth between 50million and 70million euros (£44-67m), down to the fact that he could leave for nothing in the summer of 2021.
City’s entire squad was said to be worth £1.19billion before the pandemic struck but is now said to be around £832million.
That drop of £358million is not entirely surprising – obviously the bigger a squad’s value, the more affected it will be by a crisis.
It makes City the biggest losers, with Barcelona said to be losing £320million on playing assets, and Liverpool – whose squad is the most valuable on the planet – have plummeted by £309million but are now the only £1billion-plus squad.
