How Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City spent £2.98bn on transfers

Paul Macdonald

Updated: 23 May 2023 08:39 CDT
3 min read

How Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City spent £2.98bn on transfers — © ProShots

When Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain meet in the Champions League semi finals on Wednesday night, it’ll be their first competitive meeting since both sides were given heavy investment from the Gulf states.

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Man City were taken over by the Abu Dhabi United Group, funded by the Royal Family, in 2008, while Qatar’s equivalent arrived in Paris three years later. Needless to say, both clubs have ridden a wave over the past decade and more, but the one prize neither has been able to acquire is the Champions League.

After PSG’s failure in last year’s final against Bayern Munich, the team they beat in the last round this year, one of them will get a shot at glory this year.

Between them, these clubs have spent around £2.98 billion on first team talent, not including wages and loan fees, and have also housed some of the best managers in the world. Mauricio Pochettino and Pep Guardiola are well known to one-another having faced off in both Spain and England.

But how did these clubs get to where they are today?

Starting small

Man City made a big splash to sign Robinho from Real Madrid on the day the takeover went through in August 2008, but went on to build a more solid team by signing the likes of Shay Given from Newcastle United, Craig Bellamy from West Ham United and Nigel De Jong from Hamburg in the following January.

It was a similar story for PSG in 2011; their biggest signing first up was Javier Pastore from Palermo, while serial-winner Maxwell also arrived.

It was a year later when things started to step up for both; the likes of Emmanuel Adebayor and Carlos Tevez helped Man City challenge for the Champions League, before Yaya Toure, David Silva and Edin Dzeko helped complete the job, as well as win the FA Cup, in 2011. Sergio Aguero’s arrival that summer took them to a first Premier League title.

PSG have only failed to win the Ligue 1 title in two seasons under Qatari ownership, and the signings of Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic was a seminal moment in 2012.

Man City and PSG’s best signings

Without doubt, Aguero and Silva were the most important in Man City’s early days. Later, Kevin De Bruyne’s £55 million signing from. Wolfsburg was a huge deal. Under Guardiola, signing players to suit a system is most important; Brazilian ‘keeper Ederson and Ruben Dias, both from Benfica, have arguably been his best so far.

For PSG, the most obvious players are Neymar and Kylian Mbappe. They are football’s most expensive of all time, and they’ll be hoping to prove why against Man City on Wednesday.