Wednesday 19 October 2016 18:50, UK
We look at the cost of the Barcelona and Manchester City squads ahead of their hotly-anticipated Champions League meeting...
When Barcelona and Manchester City go head-to-head at the Nou Camp in their Champions League Group C encounter on Wednesday night, there will be more than £700m in cumulative transfer expenditure on display.
Barca's predicted 18-man matchday squad has cost a staggering £323m to assemble, while City boast an even more expensive collection of stars, with their £425.35m squad.
City backed their new manager Pep Guardiola in the transfer market this summer to the tune of around £170m.
In has come John Stones from Everton for £47.5m, Leroy Sane from Schalke for £37m, Ilkay Gundogan from Borussia Dortmund for £20m, Nolito from Celta Vigo for £13.8m and Claudio Bravo from Wednesday night's opponents for £17.1m.
Guardiola has also signed young stars Gabriel Jesus, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Marlos Moreno, who will all join up with their new employers in the near future.
And even though four years have passed since his Nou Camp departure, Guardiola's stamp can still be seen on the current Barca side.
The former Bayern coach oversaw the purchase of Gerard Pique and Javier Mascherano, who are both expected to start against City, as well as handing midfielder Sergio Busquets his debut in 2008.
The Spanish champions were extremely active in the transfer market this summer, spending well over £100m. Though few of their recent additions will be guaranteed starters this season, Barca's new men have added greater strength in depth to Luis Enrique's squad.
They have signed Jasper Cillessen from Ajax for £13m, Samuel Umtiti from Lyon for £21.2m, Denis Suarez from Villarreal for £2.76m, Lucas Digne from Paris Saint Germain for £14m and Andre Gomes and Paco Alcacer from Valencia for £41.7m and £27.3m respectively.
In addition to bolstering the manager's selection options, these new signings have also set Barca up for a bright future: all but one of the outfield players brought in were 22 at the time of signing. The only exception was Alcacer who became a Barcelona player on his 23rd birthday.
Of the two starting XIs expected to begin the game, the cost of City's side dwarfs that of Barca. City have spent £284.1m on the line-up set to take the field on Wednesday night, while Barcelona's regular XI has been assembled for the comparatively cheap figure of £185.5m.
This disparity in cost does by no means signify a gulf in quality, however. The reason Barca's line up cost far less that City's is due to the presence of four academy graduates who have been moulded into top class internationals - without making a dent in the transfer budget.
Sergi Roberto, Busquets, Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi all came through Barcelona's famed La Masia academy system. It's almost impossible to accurately guess the transfer value of these four players, but if they were all to be sold, they'd surely fetch hundreds of millions of pounds in the current market; Messi alone would certainly break the world transfer record.
When breaking the line-ups down position by position, we see that City have spent more on their goalkeeper. But in an interesting quirk, although the £17.1m the Premier League side spent on Bravo is almost twice the cost of £9.7m Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Barca were the ones who sold the Chilean to City after deciding to make the 24-year-old German their number one this season.
City also boast a more expensive back four, with Guardiola's defence assembled for a total cost of £95m - exactly half of which is accounted for by the purchase of Stones - to Barcelona's £34.2m.
Comparing the respective costs of each side's midfield is less straight forward. Five of City's starting XI are considered midfielders, while Barca have a very well-established trio in the middle of the park.
The away side's £172m midfield breaks down into an average of £34.4m, whereas, with two academy graduates, Ivan Rakitic's £18m move from Sevilla in 2014 accounts for the entirety of the home side's expenditure in this area, giving them an average of just £6m per player.
City's midfield figure will be further augmented when Kevin De Bruyne is able to start. The Belgian star has been battling injury of late but completed 90 minutes in the 1-1 draw against Everton on Saturday. If he comes in for Fernando, City's midfield transfer total will be £180m, pushing the average up to £36m per player in that area of the field.
The same numerical problem is encountered in attack, with Barca's famous 'MSN' front three of Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar coming up against Sergio Aguero as City's loan forward.
The 'MSN' was assembled for a total cost of £123.6m, giving them an average of £41.2m, slightly more than the £38m City paid to sign Aguero from Atletico Madrid in 2011.
Looking at the transfer fees of the predicted substitutes, Luis Enrique's back-ups greatly outweigh Guardiola's by £137.5m to £103.25m, with many of Barca's expensive new recruits expected to be on the bench.
When City travel to take on Barcelona on Wednesday night, many of the headlines will be about the returning Guardiola. But it is the expensive array of attacking talent that will all but guarantee an exciting, end-to-end game.
