Transfer Fees: From Bayern via Hoffenheim to Cottbus

By: Jan | October 30th, 2008

In the light of ever more Hoffenheim table topping, coverage and hype, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at how much of their success is Dietmar Hopp’s money and how much of it is Ralf Rangnick’s genius. While at it, I decided to do the same for the remaining 17 Bundesliga sides as well. In other words, I checked the transfer fees each Bundesliga club had to pay to build its’ current squad…

Disclaimer: It has to be said, that clubs usually don’t release specific details about the transfers, so the transfer fees are often educated guesses. A transfer might also involve additional fees and bonus payments, not directly linked to the transfer fee. Having a club’s wage bill available alongside those numbers wouldn’t hurt either. So the following list has a certain amount of distortion built in, but should make for an interesting read nonetheless.

1. Bayern Munich: €114.800.000 (27 players, Ø27 years old)
Unsurprisingly Bayern lead this ranking by quite a margin. Over €220m just in UEFA price money for nine consecutive Champions League appearances and all the positive synergetic effects connected to it make it possible. Bayern’s competitors have just been too inconsistent in their performances to build up comparable spending power. The likes of Philipp Lahm and Bastian Schweinsteiger were very valuable freebies from Bayern’s own youth though. €80m of that sum have been spent last season alone.
2. VfL Wolfsburg: €65.560.000 (32 players, Ø25.4 years old)
I expected Wolfsburg to be up there somewhere, but not in second place. Wolfsburg just barely avoided relegation in 2006/2007 before Felix Magath took over to give the team a proper and expensive face lift.
3. Hamburger SV: €52.525.000 (28 players, Ø24.4 years old)
Hamburg were investing in affordable and promising talents until Rafael van der Vaart’s transfer set off a domino effect, which saw Hamburg invest €30m in promising and slightly less affordable talents. I have high expectations here, especially since they have yet to integrate players with fancy names like Thiago Neves.
4. Schalke 04: €51.736.000 (28 players, Ø26 years old)
Schalke had been on a transfer diet for a while, to be able to cover the costs for their new stadium et al. A good run in the Champions League has allowed them to spend €10m on Farfan and waste €3m each on Albert Streit and Carlos Großmüller. Prior to that Schalke’s bargain hunting bought them the likes of Ivan Rakitic for €3m and Rafinha for €5m.
5. Werder Bremen: €45.200.000 (30 players, Ø24.4 years old)
Bremen might want to consider increasing their transfer bill a bit in the winter to fix some holes in their defense. Should the season end in a disaster nonetheless, Bremen would be able to recoup every single Euro of the €45m they spent by selling Diego (€6m) and Mesut Özil (€3,5m) to Manchester City. €8m flop Carlos Alberto has not been included, since he’s on loan in Brazil.
6. Bayer Leverkusen: €36.834.000 (26 players, Ø24.1 years old)
The €10m summer signing of Renato Augusto makes up over a quarter of Leverkusen’s transfer bill, while Patrick Helmes joined them on a free transfer. Rudi Völler has done a good job building a very promising young team over the years. He was also lucky that none of their best talents have been snatched away by a bigger fish yet.
7. Borussia Dortmund: €35.375.000 (28 players, Ø26.3 years old)
Dortmund’s €35m are equally distributed between older players who have been through the dark times (financially), and a couple of promising young talents (i.e. Kuba and Subotic for €3m each) who look like having a bright future ahead of them.
8. 1899 Hoffenheim: €29.800.000 (24 players, Ø24.1 years old)
And here’s our “fairytale” team in 8th position already and only one or two transfers away from Leverkusen and Dortmund. Based on this ranking you can actually expect this team to do well in the league. That it’s currently enough to top the table is obviously testament to the great work of Ralf Rangnick. He had the slight advantage that he could basically built his team from scratch, giving him a tailor-made solution for the brand of football he wants to play. It’ll be interesting to see, whether this team can really mount a serious title challenge. Their new neighbors, one below in the rankings, might be proof that it’s possible.
9. VfB Stuttgart: €25.050.000 (26 players, Ø25.5 years old)
Stuttgart have won the Bundesliga in 2006/2007 with a mix of free transfers (Hitzelsperger), smart transfers (Pardo, Hilbert and Osorio) and academy players (Gomez, Khedira, Tasci). They even needed a bit less money than they paid for their current squad. They didn’t need to play extra UEFA Cup or Champions League matches either. Maybe Hoffenheim can emulate that feat? While at it: why couldn’t Stuttgart emulate their feat?
10. Hertha BSC Berlin: €22.730.000 (28 players, Ø24.4 years old)
Lucien Favre has so far managed to turn Hertha into one of the biggest overachievers compared to their spending, alongside Leverkusen and Hoffenheim. Hertha might have even more to offer than their current 5th place ranking, should they ever overcome their injury misery. €3m signing Gojko Kacar seems to be on his way to superstardom.
11. Hannover 96: €17.550.000 (27 players, Ø26.6 years old)
Hannover had hoped they could compete for the UEFA Cup spots, but €2.5m for Jan Schlaudraff and €0 for Mikael Forssell wasn’t enough.
12. Eintracht Frankfurt: €16.525.000 (30 players, Ø25.4 years old)
Frankfurt fought for their place in the Bundesliga for a couple of season’s by relying almost entirely on free transfers and academy players. They recently added some promising talents like Fenin, Caio (not so much in retrospect), Korkmaz and Bellaid. Frankfurt’s coach Friedhelm Funkel hasn’t managed to take the squad to the next level though, and they are currently close to the relegation zone.
13. Borussia Mönchengladbach: €15.675.000 (28 players, Ø26.7 years old)
For some reason (ex-)Gladbach coach Jos Luhukay took his 2. Bundesliga winning team and rotated players and tactics until the team was heading deep into relegation trouble. The new coaching duo of Hans Meyer and Christian Ziege will now try and get them out of there again and prove that they invested all the money into more than just a good second division team.
14. FC Cologne: €9.050.000 (30 players, Ø26.3 years old)
Cologne built their second division squad using free transfers through Christoph Daum’s Turkey connections. Novakovic (€1.4m) and Helmes (academy) did the necessary goal scoring. In the Bundesliga, Cologne have added Geromel (€2,5m) and Petit (free) through their new Portugal connection and don’t concede a lot of goals in return. Since Helmes left, Cologne aren’t scoring a lot of goals anymore either. Cologne’s squad investment of €9m could be easily recouped already by selling Geromel.
15. VfL Bochum: €8.800.000 (29 players, Ø27.3 years old)
Bochum enjoyed a series of great signings, buying Gekas for €500.000 and selling him for €4.7m to Leverkusen, replacing him with the similarly effective Sestak for just €750.000, while landing a marketing coup with Japanese superstar Shinji Ono. This type of transfer voodoo was possible thanks to the talent of sporting director Stefan Kuntz, who then decided to join his old love FC Kaiserslautern in the second division. Kaiserslautern avoided relegation to the third division, and another set of smart transfers later they’re topping the table of the second division. Bochum’s signings meanwhile have lost their special touch and couldn’t really impress this season.
16. Arminia Bielefeld: €6.400.000 (28 players, Ø26.4 years old)
Bielefeld’s far and wide best player King Arthur Wichniarek was a freebie from Hertha.
17. Energie Cottbus: €3.915.000 (31 players, Ø27.2 years old)
I wrote the title of this blog post, before I had compiled the numbers but fully expecting that Cottbus would inherit the 18th spot in this ranking. Well, they don’t. As expected, the vast majority of their signings are free transfers, but they actually managed to scrape together almost €4m for a few more expensive transfers. Cottbus also invested some of their Bundesliga money to pay off all remaining debts and upgraded and renovated their stadium. So, in case there won’t be another miracle and Cottbus will go down to the second division, then they will do it with a complete financial and infrastructural makeover earned during their Bundesliga adventure.
18. Karlsruher SC: €1.620.000 (23 players, Ø26.5 years old)
Here is last season’s surprise team, and seeing their total squad investment makes this achievement all the more impressive. Karlsruhe paid those €1.6m for four players, everyone else joined the team on a free transfer, loan or came through the youth system.