Manchester United’s signing of Leny Yoro for £52 million was a deal to shake up European football last week.
Most observers expected Lille’s teenage defender to end up at Real Madrid, but then United, offering greater returns and long-term challenges, came along to win the race for his signature.
It is the Premier League’s biggest transfer of the summer and a huge vote of confidence in someone so young. However, the market in which United chose to invest such a significant amount should come as no surprise.
Ligue 1, the French top division where Yoro rose to prominence last season, is where the Premier League’s 20 clubs have collectively spent more than any other foreign league over the past decade.
Spending was £1.81 billion ($2.34 billion) over the decade leading up to this summer and is likely to rise above £2 billion in the next six weeks. The weight of the numbers making the move from French clubs to the Premier League – 145 players and counting – is also unsurpassed.
No other European league has received more Premier League wealth through transfer fees than France’s top division since 2014, although Spain’s La Liga and Germany’s Bundesliga are not far behind.
La Liga used to be where Premier League clubs spent most of their money. In the decade between 2004-05 and 2013-14, it was Spain’s top division that comfortably collected the most transfer income from the Premier League, spending 27 percent more than France.
A further £1.76 billion was spent on La Liga players over the next decade, but others, notably Germany, have caught up. Bundesliga clubs sold players for a total of £1.72 billion between 2014/15 and 2023/24 and last summer this was the highest ever expenditure.
In a transfer window that saw RB Leipzig sell Josko Gvardiol to Manchester City, Christopher Nkunku to Chelsea and Dominik Szoboszlai to Liverpool, the Premier League has collectively spent £378 million on Bundesliga players. The running total since 2018 is in fact £1.26 billion, slightly more than Ligue 1 over that shorter review period.
Serie A was another market that caught the Premier League’s attention last summer, fetching more than £300m in transfer fees, but of the five major European leagues it remains the least favoured, with a ten-year return of £1 .48 billion.
Despite this, France still stands out in the overall spending table, having been the most popular place to shop in four of the past nine seasons. And this summer’s early moves, especially Yoro, would indicate this is anything but a passing fad.
Despite lagging behind rival leagues such as La Liga, Bundesliga and Serie A, Ligue 1 continues to lag behind in UEFA’s national coefficient rankings. According to respected website Transfermarkt, at least 10 players have been bought from Ligue 1 clubs in 19 of the last 20 years. In 2022-23 that total was 22, with Premier League clubs giving more (£312m) to Ligue 1 players than Ligue 1 clubs (£153m).
There have been some costly mistakes, such as Arsenal’s £72m deal to sign Nicolas Pepe – also from Lille – in 2019, but recent seasons have seen a wave of success stories, with Gabriel (Arsenal), Bruno Guimaraes ( Newcastle United), William Saliba (signed by Arsenal from St. Etienne in 2018, but who spent the next three seasons on loan at Ligue 1 clubs) and former Lille player Amadou Onana, who yesterday swapped Everton for Aston Villa for £50 million , all blooming.
Bruno Guimaraes was a hit at Newcastle United (Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
The Athletics spoke to a number of figures from the football world to gauge why Ligue 1 has become the retail market of choice for English clubs. Those who responded asked to do so anonymously, either because they did not have permission to speak or because of commercial sensitivity, but their answers were revealing.
A senior Premier League figure pointed to the physicality and athleticism of Ligue 1 and the potential for signings who could develop rapidly under better coaching in England. A senior agent, meanwhile, cited the value for money that Ligue 1 traditionally offers, compared to the data output. Players there tend to tick all kinds of boxes when they impress at a level that requires technical skill.
It is difficult to pinpoint a precise moment when French football began to attract so much attention from Premier League clubs.
Perhaps it was the impact of Eric Cantona, Manchester United’s reckless number 7 of the 1990s, or David Ginola, the dazzling winger at Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur, but more likely it was the deeper marks left by Arsenal through their French connection under Arsène Wenger . .
In addition to Nicolas Anelka, Emmanuel Petit and Robert Pires, there was Sylvain Wiltord and – through short spells in Serie A – Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira. Wenger found technically astute, physically strong players at prices far lower than their equivalents in English football. A total of 28 French players signed for Arsenal during Wenger’s 22 years in charge.
Others soon followed where he led. Signing Ligue 1 players – French or otherwise – made sense. Newcastle United signed five players from French clubs in 2012/13 alone, a season notable for being the first in which Premier League clubs spent more than £100 million on imports from a single competition. It was the year Chelsea signed Eden Hazard from Lille, Olivier Giroud left Montpellier to join Arsenal, and Spurs signed Hugo Lloris from Lyon – three big deals, but each reinforced the perception of the Ligue 1 targets.
Eden Hazard was a game changer when he signed for Chelsea (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
French football also tends to field younger players, offering that potential and promise to foreign prospects. UEFA’s annual report, The European Club Footballing Landscape, shows that 39 percent of all domestic minutes played came from players aged 23 or under in France during the 2021-2022 season. That made it the youngest profile of the major European leagues, well below the 26 percent of Premier League minutes played by under-24s and 20 percent of La Liga, where English clubs’ spending has fallen in recent years.
Only the Dutch Eredivisie, another competition heavily targeted by English clubs in recent seasons, had a comfortably younger demographic than Ligue 1, with 47 percent of minutes played by under-24s. In fact, at the end of the assessment period detailed in the UEFA report, Premier League clubs spent £240 million on Dutch top-flight players in 2022-23, including Antony, Lisandro Martinez, Cody Gakpo and Noni Madueke.
The Premier League’s financial power is becoming increasingly difficult for European rivals to compete against and it is Ligue 1, with its modern TV rights challenges, that has become more vulnerable. A newly agreed domestic deal with DAZN and beIN Sports would be worth just £420m per season, a figure dwarfed by the Premier League’s total TV packages worth more than £3bn annually. Ligue 1 rights have actually fallen in value since their peak in the 2016-2020 cycle.
Spanish, German and Italian clubs feel the same pressure, but nothing like those in France. Selling players has become a fundamental part of the business model and few do it better than Lille, who sold Yoro to Manchester United last week. Over the past five years, Lille, who finished fourth in Ligue 1 last season, have sold £250 million worth of players to Premier League clubs, including Sven Botman, Carlos Baleba, Onana, Gabriel and Pepe.
Lille sold Nicolas Pepe to Arsenal for £72m (Jeff Pachoud/AFP via Getty Images)
Lyon, another big name in French football, has been equally adept. Their returns have also topped £200m since 2019, with the likes of Lucas Paqueta (to West Ham), Guimaraes (Newcastle) and Tanguy Ndombele (Tottenham) sold for huge profits.
Ligue 1 still managed to achieve a net transfer spend of just under £30 million in last summer’s transfer window, a feat that goes beyond Serie A and La Liga, but that was in large part down to the lavish spending of Paris Saint-Germain, forever insulated by the backing of their Qatar Sports Investment ownership group.
PSG remains the only French club to be in the top 10 of Deloitte’s Football Money League, a list of European clubs that generate the biggest revenues. Marseille were 20th in the 2024 list, with Lyon 29th, but the rest of Ligue 1, especially those not benefiting from the extra income from European football, could see incomes change from a single sale. It’s harder to say no to English overtures.
French football is therefore central to the development plans of several clubs. Chelsea’s owners BlueCo bought Strasbourg last year and Liverpool owners FSG were also recently in talks to buy Bordeaux, a historically big club currently languishing in the second tier, before talks collapsed last week. The same reasons for targeting French players in the transfer market underpin the motivation to own the clubs.
No wonder, now that so many have made the switch from Ligue 1 to the Premier League. A total of 260 players from the French top division were signed between 2004 and 2024, a figure higher than Spain (245), Italy (192) and Germany (171).
The average cost of a Ligue 1 signing at the time? Just under £9 million.
The Premier League’s focus is widening as Germany’s Bundesliga continues to gain interest in the Covid-19 years, but Ligue 1 remains the most fertile ground for finding a new recruit. Yoro is current proof of this.
(Top photos: Leny Yoro, Gabriel and William Saliba; all Getty Images)