Juventus got extremely fun this summer

Hello friends, and welcome to our final continental European grades post. I’ve had a lot of fun doing these; the finances and different approaches to the window are a lot different to the Premier League.

If you missed any of the previous ones, you can catch up here:

Part 1: Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, AC Milan, Inter Milan
Part 2: Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen, RB Leipzig
Part 3: Napoli, Bayern Munich, Stuttgart, Roma

Today, we’ve got a real mixed bag. Shockingly, the most competent and restrained team of the bunch was… Paris Saint-Germain?? OK!

Juventus and Marseille got better, but at what could be a very punitive future cost. Lyon, meanwhile… well. Uhh. I don’t know how to explain Lyon. They’re very strange. And probably just bad. —KM

Juventus — Better now, trouble later

Total incomings — €155m

• Teun Koopmeiners — €55m + €5m add-ons

• Douglas Luiz — €50m

• Khéphren Thuram — €20m + €5m add-ons

• Juan Cabal — €13m + €2m add-ons

• Vasilije Adžić — €2m + €3m add-ons

• Nicolás González — Loan, €34m buy obligation

• Michele Di Gregorio — Loan, €18m buy obligation

• Pierre Kalulu — Loan, €14m buy obligation

• Michele Di Gregorio — Loan, €14m buy obligation

• Francisco Conceição — Loan, €30m buy option

There are two sides to this coin, and we’re going to start with the positive one. Juventus have signed some very talented players in positions of need. They undoubtedly have a better squad than they did last season, and they’re obvious Scudetto challengers.

Teun Koopmeiners creates a ton in the final third, and Douglas Luiz does a lot of shot-creating for a more box-to-box midfielder as well. Nicolás González is a high value shooter and Francisco Conceição is a dribbling machine with plenty of shot and assist capability too. This team just got really fun.

If you’re a Juventus fan, you’re probably not too bothered about the longer-term problems or player valuation stuff. You got fun guys who fit your new manager’s system, and that will make the team better this season. I don’t want to yuck your yum, just skip the next part if that’s how you want to feel about this window.

The other side of the coin: The most expensive players are unlikely to increase in value and will probably start declining by the end of their contracts. I don’t think anyone else in the world was going to pay €50m+ for Koopmeiners and Luiz, or €34m for González, and Juventus ended up bidding against themselves. Paying a premium for one prime-age player is fine; buying three expensive 26-year-olds at the same time isn’t very smart business.

Juventus have also committed at least €80m towards next summer, and will have to spend a further €30m to exercise Conceição’s purchase option. These guys better work out, because they don’t have a ton of flexibility going forward.

Ravi: B- | Kim: C+

Total outgoings — €128m

• Matías Soulé — €26m + €4m add-ons

• Dean Huijsen — €15m + €3m add-ons

• Samuel Iling-Junior — €14m

• Moise Kean — €13m + €5m add-ons

• Federico Chiesa — €12m + €3m add-ons

• Enzo Barrenechea — €8m + €3m add-ons

• Koni De Winter — €8m + €2m add-ons

• Kaio Jorge — €7m

• Academy sales — Approx. €5m

• Adrien Rabiot — Free

• Alex Sandro — Free

• Wojciech Szczęsny — Free

• Mattia De Sciglio — Free

• 6 senior players loaned (including Daniele Rugani)

These are pretty good sales, and they got a lot of big wages off the books. They made Aston Villa pay a premium for a couple of guys in the Douglas Luiz PSR swap. Selling Chiesa this window for a low fee is probably better than letting him walk on a free next summer, but it still looks pretty bad for such a talented player.

I think they’ll come to regret selling Huijsen when Bournemouth inevitably moves him on to a rich English club for 4x that fee.

Ravi: B- | Kim: B

The football team is better, and they’ll challenge to win trophies this year. But did Juventus do good business? No, they did not. This probably does not matter in the short term, but the bill comes due eventually.

Overall grade: B-

Olympique Lyonnais — I can’t be honest about this without exposing us to a libel lawsuit

Total incomings — €141m

• Moussa Niakhaté — €32m

• Ernest Nuamah — €28.5m

• Orel Mangala (loaned out) — €24m

• Georges Mikautadze — €18.5m

• Saïd Benrahma — €14m

• Abner Vinícius — €8m

• Mama Baldé (flipped) — €6m

• Duje Ćaleta-Car — €6m

• Tanner Tessmann — €6m

• Jordan Veretout — €4m

• Alejandro Gomes — Free

• Rémy Descamps — Free

• Warmed Omari — Loan, €10m buy option

• Wilfried Zaha — Loan

Are these guys Chelsea From AliExpress? Lyon appear to be engaging in some kind of player speculation and trading scheme on more of a budget, but they’ve still spent more money than you’d expect from a club with their revenue.

Whatever’s happening here, they’re doing a bad job of it. Baldé’s loan option was executed, and he was then sold for less than they paid for him. Nuamah also had a loan option executed, then stormed out of a medical at Fulham when Lyon attempted to flip him for… reportedly the exact same fee they paid for him. Mangala had his loan option executed, then was loaned out to Everton, presumably to put him in the shop window?

Niakhaté is 28 and has had two injury-riddled seasons at Forest, so I’m baffled as to why he cost this much. Most of the lower or no fee guys are simply not good enough to play regular minutes for a team that aspires to finish top three in Ligue 1 and make the knockout stages of Champions League/challenge to win Europa League.

A note on Benrahma: we’d previously under-listed his transfer fee in our West Ham grades piece, accidentally listing his previous loan fee instead of the permanent purchase price. That’s now fixed in the web version of that newsletter.

I simply have no fucking clue what’s going on here and I suspect the director of football is— [giant vaudeville hook yanks me offstage]

Ravi: D+ | Kim: D-

Total outgoings — €42m

• Jake O’Brien — €20m

• Mamadou Sarr — €10m

• Skelly Alvero — €6m

• Mama Baldé — €4.5m + €1.5m add-ons

• Tino Kadewere — Free

• Henrique — Free

• Sinaly Diomandé — Free

• 6 senior players loaned (including Orel Mangala)

Hey, that’s not so bad, Baldé and Mangala weirdness aside.

Ravi: B | Kim: B

Please enjoy this video of Lyon owner John Textor struggling with basic arithmetic.

You, reader, can run a football club if you just believe in yourself.

Overall grade: C-

Olympique Marseille — I wouldn’t have done that either!

Total incomings — €99m

• Mason Greenwood — €32m

• Elye Wahi — €25m + €5m add-ons

• Ismaël Koné — €17.5m

• Bamo Meïté — €10m

• Derek Cornelius — €4.5m

• Gerónimo Rulli — €3m

• Jeffrey de Lange — €2m

• Pierre-Emile Højbjerg — Loan, €20m buy obligation

• Jonathan Rowe — Loan, €17m buy obligation

• Neal Maupay — Loan, €4m buy obligation

• Valentín Carboni — Loan, €36m buy option

• Lilian Brassier — Loan, €11m buy option

Similar problem to Juventus, but on a smaller scale and not as good. Is Marseille a better football team now than they were last season? Yeah, for sure. But did they really have to pay these prices? The Greenwood, Wahi, and Højbjerg fees are excessive, even though those are good players.

There’s only so much we can say about Greenwood and Wahi off the pitch as a UK-based company, but if you are unfamiliar with them, the personal life sections of their Wikipedia pages contain some additional information.

I like the Koné and Meïté pickups a lot more, those are good prices for 22-year-olds who showed a lot of promise last season. They’re good enough to help now, and have a lot of upside for the future.

I’m a bit more skeptical on Rowe — he way overperformed his xG last year, doesn’t have enough of a sample for us to conclude he’s actually a plus finisher, had average dribbling numbers, and creates almost nothing for his teammates. I’d have recommended against signing him for Marseille.

Carboni is an interesting prospect. His numbers at Monza were just OK, but Monza wasn’t a very good team, and his highlights are pretty outrageous. It’s a good low-risk punt, and I’m interested to see how he does in a better team.

Ravi: C+ | Kim: C

Total outgoings — €76m

• Iliman Ndiaye — €18m

• Vitinha — €16m

• Ismaïla Sarr — €15m

• Mattéo Guendouzi — €13m + €5m add-ons

• Jonathan Clauss — €5m

• Jordan Veretout — €4m

• Pape Gueye — Free

• 4 senior players loaned (including Samuel Gigot)

Ndiaye and Vitinha were both sold at a pretty significant loss after not living up to expectations, and pretty quickly too. Generally, if I’m going to authorize investing a significant percentage of my club’s budget on a transfer fee, I’m not giving up on that player after one disappointing season.

Sarr and Guendouzi were small profitable flips, so that’s not bad.

Ravi: B- | Kim: C+

Spent a lot of money on questionable signings and committed a lot of money to next window and sold two big money signings at a loss. Ouch.

Overall grade: C+

Paris Saint-Germain — Hey, not bad

Total incomings — €185m

• João Neves — €60m + €10m add-ons

• Désiré Doué — €50m

• Willian Pacho — €40m + €5m add-ons

• Matvey Safonov — €15m + €5m add-ons

Those look like enormous fees for teenagers… but I think PSG cooked. Neves already looks like the best midfielder in Ligue 1. Doué is a dribbling machine who already has 1.86 xG + xA in 55 minutes on the pitch. There isn’t even going to be a slow build here. These guys are already important and productive players.

I’m less high on Pacho, who had pretty good but not elite numbers for Eintracht Frankfurt last year. But he’s a 22-year-old lefty who is an above average passer, so this is far from disastrous, even if he doesn’t live up to that fee.

On Safonov, I don’t know how much insight you can take from Russian league data or how one would translate it to other leagues these days. Gotta trust your scouts on this one.

Ravi: B | Kim: B+

Total outgoings — €91.5m

• Manuel Ugarte — €50m + €10m add-ons

• Hugo Ekitike — €16.5m

• Joane Gadou — €10m

• Danilo Pereira — €5m

• Kylian Mbappé — Free

• Keylor Navas — Free

• Sergio Rico — Free

• Layvin Kurzawa — Free

• 8 senior players loaned (including Xavi Simons)

Having this many senior players leaving on frees or loaned out is a pretty bad look for previous windows, but I don’t think they made any mistakes. Ugarte getting flipped for exactly what they paid for him is fine.

The kind of impossible to assess thing here is Mbappe. He left on a free after PSG probably should have sold him for a ton of money last summer, but they’re not a real business, so who cares. I would say his wages coming off the books meant they could spend a lot this summer and still come out net positive, but as it turns out, they might owe him a shitload of money.

Ravi: B | Kim: B

PSG look well set up for the future after buying two of the most talented teenagers in world football and reducing their wage bill significantly. Are they entering a post-Galácticos (comment dit-on ça en français?) era, or are they gonna go absolutely apeshit next summer?

Overall grade: B

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