Guardiola spent more than 2 billion USD buying players
This summer, Man City spent $265 million to bring in Mateo Kovacic, Josko Gvardiol, Jeremy Doku and Matheus Nunes. This number brings the spending to buy players since the beginning of Guardiola's coaching career in 2008 to 2.12 billion USD - the highest among coaches, according to transfer data platform Transfermarkt.
At Man City alone, Guardiola has spent more than 1.3 billion USD on 50 players since taking charge in 2016. Many stars have exceeded the 50 million USD mark, including John Stones (60 million USD), Erling Haaland (63 million USD), Leroy Sane (55 million USD), Aymeric Laporte (70 million USD), Benjamin Mendy (60 million USD), Kyle Walker (55 million USD), Bernardo Silva (53 million USD), Riyad Mahrez (70 million USD) million USD), Rodri (75 million USD), Joao Cancelo (65 million USD), Ruben Dias (77 million USD) or Jack Grealish (139 million USD).
The Spanish coach maintains similar shopping habits at Barca or Bayern Munich. Guardiola approved spending more than 80 million USD to bring Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Camp Nou, while Arturo Vidal - with 50 million USD - is his biggest contract at the Allianz Arena.
Causing teams to spend a lot of money, but Guardiola also brings great results. He owns 36 titles in his top coaching career, including with Barca winning three La Ligas, two Champions Leagues, Bayern winning three Bundesliga, two German Cups, Man City winning five Premier Leagues, one Champions League, one Super Cup Europe.
Except for Kevin de Bruyne, who came to Etihad in the summer of 2015, and Phil Foden, who was promoted from the academy, the remaining pillars in the Man City squad that won three in the 2022-2023 season are all stars bought by Guardiola in the past seven years.
The spending level at Man City helps Guardiola surpass Jose Mourinho - who cannot spend heavily on the transfer floor at Tottenham and Roma. This summer, Roma only spent 3 million USD to sign Leandro Paredes. For the rest, they borrowed Renato Sanches, Diego Llorente, Rasmus Kristensen, Sardar Azmoun, Romelu Lukaku and recruited Houssem Aouar and Evan Ndicka on a free basis.
Previously, "The Special One" was supported on the transfer floor while working at Chelsea, Man Utd or Real Madrid. Chelsea is the team that spends the most money to buy players, during Mourinho's two terms leading the club, with 896 million USD. However, the two most expensive contracts that the Portuguese coach made both took place when he led Man Utd, namely Paul Pogba (123 million USD) and Romelu Lukaku (103 million USD). In total, Mourinho spent nearly 2 billion USD to strengthen his force.
Ranked third is Carlo Ancelotti with 1.74 billion USD, after leading many big clubs such as PSG, Chelsea, AC Milan or Real Madrid. The Italian coach's spending will be higher if Real accepts to spend $200 million to recruit striker Kylian Mbappe from PSG this summer.
Behind Ancelotti are Max Allegri (1.5 billion USD), Diego Simeone (1.3 billion USD), Manuel Pellegrini (1.28 billion USD), Thomas Tuchel (1.7 billion USD), Antonio Conte (1 .25 billion USD), Mauricio Pochettino (1.23 billion USD) and Jurgen Klopp (1.2 billion USD).
