Spain
When the Spanish league published its list of completed transfers not long after its midnight deadline on Monday, David de Gea’s name was not on it but plenty of others were. This has been a record-breaking window for Spanish clubs, who have spent £410m on players, selling £295m worth (so far) — and that is despite the fact that neither Real Madrid nor Barcelona were, this time, the motors behind the market. Atlético Madrid and Valencia both spent more on signings. Even in net spend, the traditional big two have not spent the most: Valencia have, with £63.5m (€100m) spent in total.
That figure is a little misleading, though. That £63.5m (£100m) includes the signings of Rodrigo (£22m), Álvaro Negredo (£20m) and André Gomes (£11m), all of whom were brought to the club last summer but whose purchase was formalised 12 months later. With Nicolás Otamendi going to Manchester City, Valencia have also added his replacement, Aymen Abdennour from Monaco, plus Santi Mina from Celta and Matty Ryan from Club Brugge.
Barcelona are under a Fifa transfer ban (which is, in reality, a registration ban) and have signed just two players, Aleix Vidal and Arda Turan for a combined £42m, neither of whom will be able to play until the winter window opens. They have sold Pedro (Chelsea) and Gerard Deulofeu (Everton). As they awaited a solution to the David de Gea case, Real Madrid had spent £65m (£51m net) and brought in eight players (including loan returnees), the most notable Mateo Kovacic (£26m), Danilo (£23m) and Casemiro (£5.5m), but only Danilo is likely to be a regular starter.
Sevilla have been active, too. They used the money from the sales of Carlos Bacca and Vidal to fund the signing of 10 players including Steven N’Zonzi, Adil Rami, Gaël Kakuta, Ciro Immobile and Fernando Llorente. They have spent £21.6m, but made a £17m profit.
Then there is the team that stand out most in the market: Atlético Madrid. They have spent £92m on transfers, at a net spend of just over £3.6m. The sales of Arda Turan (£30m), Mario Mandzukic (£14m), Toby Alderweireld (£12m), João Miranda (£11m), Mario Suárez (£7.3m), Raúl García (£7.3m) and Raúl Jiménez (£6.6m) have enabled them to reshape their squad. Jackson Martínez, Luciano Vietto and Filipe Luis are among seven signings, while Oliver Torres has returned from Porto.
The most exciting signing may just have been made by Betis, who have been very busy in the market. Late on Monday night it was confirmed that the player that everyone loves and Betis fans love even more is on his way home. Joaquín is back. Sid Lowe
Germany
A strict regulatory regime – no incoming players who aren’t registered with the league by lunchtime, end of business at 6pm – as well as a football culture that prides itself on getting things done early, without haste, used to make deadline day pass with a whimper in Germany. But this year, everything was different. Borussia Dortmund’s CEO, Hans-Joachim Watzke, was not the only high ranking official unnerved by “all the big and rich clubs causing bedlam on 30 or 31 August, with €20m, €30m, €40m, €50m. As a manager, you ask yourself what’s the point of pre-season if you lose four men and get four new ones late on.”
Sales worth £161m to the Premier League alone have had destabilising knock-on effect. It was especially keenly felt over the weekend, when VfL Wolfsburg found themselves with £51m in their bank account, having sold the player of the year, Kevin De Bruyne, to Manchester City. They brought in the German international Julian Draxler as replacement for half that sum, which in turn led to Schalke 04 scrambling – unsuccessfully, in the end – for new recruits.
Leverkusen faced a similar dynamic when they sold Son Heung-min to Spurs for £22m, settling on Dortmund’s Kevin Kampl as replacement. The league leaders filled the void by taking Adnan Januzaj on loan from Man Utd on Monday night.
The late upheaval notwithstanding, the Bundesliga has done pretty well. Neither Bayern nor Dortmund lost key players, and the Bavarian club’s £22m move for Shakhtar Donetsk’s Douglas Costa has all the hallmarks of bargain. Smaller clubs, such as FC Augsburg, have meanwhile not pretended that they’re anything but delighted with the cash injection from the UK. When Chelsea paid £18m for the Ghanaian full-back Baba Rahman, Augsburg’s sporting director, Stefan Reuter, made sure to take him to the airport and put him on the plane himself. Raphael Honigstein
Italy
This has been a fast and furious summer in the Italian transfer market, with Serie A clubs splashing out more than £440m between them and bringing in around £348m through sales. To put those numbers in perspective, last year the combined spend was closer to £256m, with a good £231m coming back into clubs’ coffers in transfer fees received.
Juventus’s run to the Champions League final played a part, the Bianconeri reinvesting the prize money and gate receipts earned during that run. They acted decisively to sign Mandzukic, Paulo Dybala and Sami Khedira before the end of June but then continued to plough proceeds from any sales, as well as any wage savings, back into the club.
Andrea Pirlo, Arturo Vidal, Carlos Tevez, Kingsley Coman, Angelo Ogbonna and Fernando Llorente were just some of the names to move on, with Juan Cuadrado and Alex Sandro arriving in their stead.
On Monday Juventus finally added the trequartista that Massimiliano Allegri has been asking for all summer, signing Hernanes from Inter for £8m. The Brazilian is no Julian Draxler, whom they had been chasing, but he will contribute and the price was fair.
Inter themselves were the next biggest spenders, breaking the €100m (£73m)mark on Monday as they ploughed the proceeds from the Hernanes sale into Felipe Melo, Alex Telles and Adem Ljajic. They had already made Geoffrey Kondogbia the third-most expensive player in club history at €30m.
Among those Italian newspapers giving out grades, the Nerazzurri have been a near consensus choice as top operators of this transfer window. They have brought in as many as eight new starters and added genuine talent – Stevan Jovetic has already scored three goals and Ivan Perisic joined from Wolfsburg on Sunday – while still finishing up with a net spend of less than £5.8m. They brought in good money for Mateo Kovacic and Hernanes and recouped their costs on Xherdan Shaqiri.
Milan did a less good job of balancing their books – finishing the summer £45m out of pocket after reinventing their attack with Carlos Bacca and Luiz Adriano (who knows what part will be played by Mario Balotelli), as well as adding the promising, but expensive, young Italians Andrea Bertolacci and Alessio Romagnoli in midfield and defence.
The arrival of minority investor Bee Taechaubol permitted such apparent recklessness but only time will tell if his was money well spent.
Roma did an excellent job of finding value in the market, scooping up Edin Dzeko, Iago Falqué and Mohamed Salah for modest fees. Lazio declined to gamble on the possibility of reaching the Champions League group stage, and duly lost their qualifier to Bayer Leverkusen.
But, as usual, some also got left behind. Napoli spent the entire final day of the window haggling with Roberto Soriano over his image rights, and duly failed to submit the paperwork required to complete his transfer from Sampdoria on time. Paolo Bandini
France
With their financial powers and no FFP restrictions any more, PSG are in a league of their own. They signed Ángel Di María, Layvin Kurzawa, Kevin Trapp and Benjamin Stambouli for £90m, while keeping all their stars. Lyon, back in the Champions League, have also been very busy in terms of signings with Mathieu Valbuena joining for £4m from Dynamo Moscow and Rafael from Manchester United, and in terms of renewing contracts (Alexandre Lacazette, Nabil Fekir).
Marseille’s summer has been shambolic. Marcelo Bielsa left his manager’s job after the first game of the season. Michel replaced him but the squad is considerably weakened, with 80% of last season’s starting XI having left. And the replacements are either gambles (Lassana Diarra, Abou Diaby, Rémy Cabella) or not as good.
For Monaco, there is a £100m profit in the transfer window. The club’s business model is that anyone is for sale if the price is right. L’ASM lost key figures like Anthony Martial (£57.5m to Manchester United) or Abdennour (£22m to Valencia) and replaced them with younger players. Between them, the four biggest clubs in France bought for £170m and sold for £210m.
Ligue 1 has attracted three Champions League winners in Fábio Coentrão (Monaco), Rafael and Di María. The Argentinian is the standout newcomer this summer. PSG chased him for more than a year and finally got him for £46m. For his debut at Monaco last Sunday, he gave a fine assist to Ezequiel Lavezzi 18 minutes after coming on. He looks already like the Di María from Real Madrid more than the one from Manchester United and he is expected to have a massive impact.
But France also saw the return of its former proteges. Ben Arfa (Nice), Diarra and Diaby (Marseille), Valbuena have all come home. It will also be interesting to follow loanees Stephan El Shaarawi at Monaco and Quintero at Rennes where Yoann Gourcuff has also signed.
But the move of the summer belongs to Martial. He is only 19, has 52 Ligue 1 appearances and no caps. There was shock at the £57.5m price paid by Manchester United, five million more than the French record when Zinedine Zidane left Juventus for Real Madrid in 2001 and £54m more than Monaco paid Lyon for Martial two years ago. “More expensive than Zidane” was the headline on the front page of L’Equipe on Tuesday. Julien Laurens
