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Anthony Martial

IN betting the house on 19-year-old Monaco forward Anthony Martial, Manchester United have emphasised the English Premier League’s standing as the financial ogre of European football.

United’s decision to gamble a reported £36 million on a player with only 52 league games to his name has sparked incredulity on both sides of the Channel.

British tabloid The Sun rechristened the 20-time English champions “MADchester United”, while The Times said the deal – a world-record for a teenage player – was “the latest sign of panic buying at Old Trafford”.

In France the focus has centred on reports that the eventual fee could rise to a staggering €80 million, which would make Martial, in the words of L’Equipe’s front-page headline, “More expensive than Zidane”.

According to financial consultants Deloitte, the deal took the gross spending of England’s top-flight clubs beyond the record for a single transfer window of £835 million, which was set last year.

Buoyed by the announcement earlier this year of a new domestic television rights deal worth £5.14 billion for the period 2016 to 2019, English clubs have spent more lavishly than ever before.

And with a new global TV rights package set to be announced early in 2016, experts expect total rights-related income to exceed £8 billion.

“Today it’s the English clubs, and no-one else, who make the market,” says French football agent Christophe Mongai, whose client Jordan Amavi joined Aston Villa from Nice last month.

“Noone can compete, except for the top five or six clubs in Europe.”

Including the arrival of Martial, Louis van Gaal has now overseen a quarter of a billion pounds in transfer spending since succeeding David Moyes as United manager last year.

Manchester City, meanwhile, have spent around £140 million in the current window alone, including eye-watering deals for Kevin De Bruyne, Raheem Sterling and Nicolas Otamendi.

“What we’re seeing with the likes of Manchester United, and to a lesser extent Chelsea, is they’re buying talent with a view to maximising its potential in the future,” Rob Wilson, a football finance expert from Sheffield Hallam University, told AFP.

“What they’re finding is the players that they might have gone for, these ‘marquee’ signings, the values for those are so wildly inflated that they’re beginning to look elsewhere.” — SuperSport