Newcastle United were constrained by PSR restrictions, yet UEFA discovered that the Magpies still managed to spend more than Barcelona and AC Milan.
Newcastle United’s squad cost more to put together than Barcelona’s and AC Milan’s.
This is according to a recent UEFA analysis, the European club financial and investment landscape, which association president Aleksander Ceferin dubbed the ‘essential guide to European football finances’. The survey revealed a stark discrepancy in spending between English teams and international sides, with the Premier League having the four most costly squads and nearly half (nine) of the top 20 most valuable squads last year.
Although PSR restrictions have limited Newcastle’s expenditure, UEFA has revealed that the Magpies’ team cost €543 million (£456.56 million) to put together, which was more than Barcelona, Napoli, AC Milan, Atletico Madrid, and AS Roma spent.
Newcastle have a long way to go to close the revenue gap with Barcelona (£642.15 million), but according to UEFA, the black-and-whites have earned more than Juventus, Bayer Leverkusen, and Marseille. The Magpies, of course, have just announced a club record turnover after a 28% increase in income to £320.3 million and a £60.7 million cut in losses. Ceferin would surely have appreciated such figures.
“While most clubs appear to be managing player wage increases responsibly, other costs are rising rapidly, putting greater pressure on operating margins than ever before,” the president of UEFA posted on Twitter. “The clubs must remain vigilant as considerable work still needs to be done to restore pre-pandemic profitability.”
Newcastle will continue to be restricted to losses of £105 million over a rolling three-year period next season, as per the Premier League’s PSR regulations, although the Magpies are testing top-to-bottom anchoring and squad cost limits in the background. Squad cost restrictions will limit on-pitch spending to 85% of revenue and net profit/loss on player sales for non-European teams and 70% for European clubs. Andrea Traverso, UEFA’s director of financial sustainability and research, would welcome the Premier League’s adoption of the squad cost ratio model, which would replicate UEFA’s criteria.
“English clubs, despite their record level of revenues surpassing the €7bn mark and totalling almost as much as Spain and Germany combined, contributed 73% of the entire European net losses,” the economist stated. “The persistence of similar levels of net losses in 2024 urges the coordinated implementation of tighter domestic cost control mechanisms that are fully aligned with European regulations in order to ensure the financial sustainability of the entire European football ecosystem in the long-term.”
