As a measure of the new reality of European football, it would be hard to imagine better. The summer 2014 transfer window will surely go down in history as the first in which Hull City — erstwhile of the English fourth division — spent more money than Juventus, 30-time champions of Italy, twice kings of Europe.
This is no quirk, no outlier. Queens Park Rangers, Sky Bet Championship play-off winners this year, spent almost as much as AC Milan, Inter Milan and Napoli combined. Southampton’s financial resources over the past two months have proved greater than those of Borussia Dortmund.
As the dust settles on English football’s annual festival of wanton consumption, the power and the primacy of the Barclays Premier League is all too clear.
England’s top flight spent about £835 million on players this summer. That is not far off what the elite sides of Italy, Spain and Germany managed between them.
Once adjusted to allow for outgoings, the effect is even more pronounced; £392 million seeped out of the Premier League to other divisions, other lands, this summer. Its closest competitor was the Bundesliga, with a figure of £95 million. Only the three Spanish giants, Barcelona, Real and Atletico Madrid, can keep pace.
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There is a simple explanation for this. “We continue to see the increased resources that Premier League clubs enjoy — as a result of improved broadcast deals — translate into investment in players,” Dan Jones, a partner in Deloitte, the sports business group, said.
“Last season the average Premier League club received over £25 million more in central broadcast distributions than they did the previous season.” That, as he acknowledges, “has helped fuel a new record spend this summer”, despite the strictures of Uefa’s Financial Fair Play regulations limiting the expenditure available to Manchester City, in particular.
It is those television rights that give the Premier League its unrivalled clout. That is why, whenever a new deal is announced, it is heralded as a sign of the division’s status, its pre-eminence.
That is why Hull can compete with Juventus, why QPR can outstrip some of the world’s most garlanded clubs.
The present television arrangements, at home and abroad, are worth £5.5 billion. When they are renegotiated for the 2016 season, that amount will soar. The day is not far away when West Ham United will have as much money as Bayern Munich.
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If that sounds like a cause for celebration, it is worth noting some of the other figures that have been released since the window closed. Of the £835 million spent by English clubs, some £520 million was directed to clubs overseas. Some £239 million was paid to Spanish teams alone, with £84 million handed to those in Portugal and almost £50 million to those in France.
The usual reaction to that is to bemoan the influx of foreign players, to point out that such an incursion can only hinder the progress of young, native talent. That is entirely accurate, of course; Roy Hodgson, the England manager, will have noted with dismay that, even at a time of such voracious spending, there were only two clubs in for Tom Cleverley.
It is tempting to wonder at what point the very top clubs will decide that their academies are all but a waste of time. If they do, they might like to ask a few questions of their scouts, too.
There are clubs — such as Porto, Udinese and even Atletico — who continually unearth burgeoning stars at bargain prices. A canny Premier League club would look to sign not their players, but their recruitment department.
There is, though, another consequence of the soaring television deals that often goes ignored: the perennial rise in the Premier League’s rights deals is not just good news for its constituent clubs. If anything, it is better news for those clubs in Europe who inevitably end up pocketing much of the money.
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When Richard Scudamore, the Premier League chief executive, announces the lucrative new broadcast deal for next year, expect champagne flutes to be clinked not just in boardrooms in Liverpool and Manchester, but in Lyons and Madrid, too.
That may not appear to be a bad thing, but it is not without its consequences, notably that the amount of money the Premier League clubs have is not directly proportional to the quality of players they buy. It is not the case that having greater wealth leads to acquiring bigger stars. It simply leads to an artificial inflation. They are getting the same goods at a greater price, because demand outstrips supply. This is not notional. One Italian club bought a South American striker last summer on the grounds that, even if he did not succeed, his pace and power would prove attractive to a cash-saturated Premier League club. At the same time, Seville were hawking Gary Medel around Spain for £6 million. As soon as Cardiff City expressed an interest, the cost shot up to £11 million.
Hull might have more money than Juventus, but they do not have the same allure. They are shopping in a different market. It is just one where the prices have shot up. The same cannot necessarily be said for the quality.