Alexander Isak wishing to leave Newcastle United is one thing; working out who could afford to buy him is quite another.
Newcastle hope any serious transfer fee conversation will start at the mind-boggling figure of £150million ($203m). To put that into context, it would make Isak the third most expensive footballer in history, behind Paris Saint-Germain recruits Neymar and Kylian Mbappe.
The field of possible destinations looks slim. Even ignoring the football factors, the financials in play are huge and an obvious barrier to entering the Isak market.
Buying Isak for £150m is more like a £171m transfer once we add in some estimated agent fees and, if the buyer is a Premier League club, a four per cent transfer levy. From a profit and sustainability rules (PSR) perspective, spread over a five-year deal, those fees alone would add £33m-35m to a club’s costs.
Then there are Isak’s wages. His exact demands are unknown but given his status as one of the world’s leading players a range of £250,000 to £300,000 a week is far from unreasonable. At that level, the hit to a club would be £15m-£18m annually.
Essentially, it’s fair to say signing Isak would lump £50m in annual costs onto his new club — and that’s just from an accounting perspective. It’s often forgotten that clubs will need to pay the money in cash eventually and, over our hypothetical five-year deal, Isak would probably cost a new suitor more than £250m.
Plainly, that rules a lot of teams out. But can anyone afford it?
Serie A
In Italy, Juventus have lost around £670m in the past four years. Both Milan and Inter are recovering financially but the fee for Isak would be more than two-fifths of their most recently published revenues.
Napoli, Serie A winners last season, have posted impressive profits recently and boasted a strong cash position at last check. They would be the most feasible Italian suitor yet still an unlikely one; their most recent wage bill was lower than Newcastle’s.
Bundesliga
In Germany, Eintracht Frankfurt’s heady player sales have imbued them with cash and regulatory headroom but signing up to a commitment like Isak is fanciful. Their 2023-24 revenues were £213m, so his signing would cost over 70 per cent of annual turnover.
Borussia Dortmund’s wage bill in the same season, when they reached the Champions League final, was only around £12m higher than Newcastle’s, so meeting Isak’s demands seems unlikely even with the club on a generally sound footing. Dortmund weren’t expected to spend much this summer and have already spent their Club World Cup earnings on Jobe Bellingham and Yan Couto.
Bayern Munich are a possible option, but success in their other plans, like getting Luis Diaz from Liverpool, would reduce that likelihood. The German champions are the fifth-highest-earning club in world football, according to Deloitte, and consistently profitable, generating a £135m pre-tax surplus in the past five seasons.
Financially, Bayern are one of the few clubs who could afford Isak — they showed as much by being realistic contenders for the signature of Florian Wirtz earlier this summer. But the fact they are prioritising other targets would slim the chances of a deal for Isak.
Ligue 1
In France, like with most big-name players these days, only PSG could afford him. They are unencumbered by lax financial rules at home and have enjoyed huge income from the Champions League and Club World Cup recently. Wages fell with the departure of Mbappe last year, but they remain big spenders.
Compliance abroad is trickier — PSG are in a ‘settlement regime’ with UEFA until the end of this season, so there are some limitations on their spending. Still, moving on someone like the unwanted Randal Kolo Muani would feasibly open a space for Isak, both in the squad and in terms of remaining within any financial rules. Cash tends not to be a problem in the French capital.
La Liga
In Spain, Barcelona are having enough trouble making room to register players they’ve already signed. Atletico Madrid just about break even but have high debts to service and, based on most recent figures, the amortisation cost of signing Isak would be more than half their total amortisation bill.
They’ve spent big (£65m) on Julian Alvarez since those figures were released, but that in itself likely rules them out of being able to enter the market at over double Alvarez’s price.
Real Madrid tend to be able to afford just about anyone and recently announced 2024-25 revenues of €1.2billion (£1.0bn), the largest in the world. Even with Mbappe’s huge wage coming onboard, Madrid were profitable last season, to the tune of €24m (£20m) after tax.
Even so, they have pressing needs elsewhere, and there are only so many huge salaries you can take at once. Real have already spent just shy of £150m in transfer fees alone already this summer, and doubling that again looks unlikely, even for them. It’s not impossible, but it is improbable.
Premier League
And so, what of England? The world’s richest league is naturally the one where clubs could most realistically afford Isak, though even here he’d be limited for actual choice.
Tottenham Hotspur have the PSR headroom but unlikely the cash or space on the wage bill, which is kept notoriously low relative to income, and especially as they’re already spending this summer. Further south, as we detailed in June, Brighton & Hove Albion have much in the way of regulatory headroom but are plainly an unrealistic option.
That same piece outlined Chelsea as, ludicrously to some, the club with the greatest scope to spend from a PSR perspective. They don’t want for cash, having received not far shy of £1bn from their current owners, but this deal, alongside their other activity this summer, would be pushing things. Particularly as Chelsea are in their own UEFA settlement regime, and the impact of recent intra-group asset sales won’t boost their PSR calculations forever.
Chelsea are already in the position of needing to sell players to free up space on their Champions League squad list and, in any case, it’s unclear how Isak’s salary would line up at a club where there’s been a concerted (albeit sometimes overstated) effort to reduce staff costs.
Arsenal were long viewed as a viable landing spot for Isak, but the imminent signing of Viktor Gyokeres casts clear doubt on that. Even without Gyokeres, they have spent over £100m already this summer, albeit after a lean year last season (net spend: £20.9m). Arsenal probably could afford the £50m annual cost of signing Isak, especially as revenues continue to rise, but their activity this summer (both completed and pending) would mean they’d very much be pushing toward their limit by doing so.
Manchester City have plenty of money and PSR headroom, even after spending some £300m or more since the turn of the year. They could afford Isak, having booked nearly £200m in profit in the past three seasons. Football reasons seem a more likely impediment to moving there.
Across town, Manchester United have been heavily loss-making in recent years but, as The Athletic detailed in June, their PSR losses are much lower than previously thought. United remain the fourth-highest-earning club in the world and have undertaken significant cost-cutting over the past year.
From a PSR perspective, they may well be able to stretch to someone like Isak, even without Champions League football this year. But cash is another issue. United’s transfer debts were over £300m net even before the recent signings of Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo, and their need to sell players this summer is more cash-focused than rules-based.
To that end, adding Isak’s wage and paying a huge fee to Newcastle looks highly unlikely, and would rely on either a further injection of shares (Sir Jim Ratcliffe invested £238.5m in 2024) or adding to an already hefty debt pile.
Remarkably, despite their £300m-plus spend already this summer, Liverpool represent the likeliest Premier League destination for Isak. The Anfield outfit would need to sell players but are already planning to; the departures of Diaz, Darwin Nunez or Harvey Elliott, or even all three, would provide a boost to profits and cash, and help them back toward the policy of sustainability driven by Fenway Sports Group over the past decade and more.
Liverpool have been able to spend so much this summer through careful financial management, and it’s exactly that which keeps them in the frame for Isak — even at the huge asking price. It’s a tall ask, even for a club as well managed as they have been, but the conditions to do it really are there: low transfer debt, strong cashflow, surging revenue and saleable assets to help offset the hit both now and in the future.
Saudi Pro League
Away from the Premier League, the oil-soaked elephant in this particular transfer room is the instance whereby Isak’s overarching employer doesn’t change.
Al Hilal are, like Newcastle, owned by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and, at the risk of stating the obvious, have no financial worries at all. Since being taken over by PIF in June 2023, Al Hilal have spent over £400m on new signings and goodness knows what more on wages. If they want to sign Isak, they can afford to.
The financials would be easy from Al Hilal’s perspective, and while selling to a club of such supreme wealth might comfort Newcastle fans in the knowledge they’ll get a chunky fee for Isak, the reality is more nuanced.
Under Premier League rules, any sale to a fellow PIF-owned club would require a ‘fair market value assessment’. In other words, if the league deemed the fee spent by Al Hilal excessive, Newcastle would have to revise down their profit on Isak in their PSR calculation.
The ramifications of a move to Saudi Arabia would be even worse on the continental stage. Under UEFA rules, player sales between related parties — which Newcastle and Al Hilal are — have to be measured at zero profit (or a loss), just as Allan Saint-Maximin’s move to Al Ahli in July 2023 was.
Isak could be sold to Al Hilal for £150m and Newcastle would enjoy the cash, but under UEFA rules, they’d be disallowed from booking any profit — thus doing nothing to improve their ability to remain compliant on the European stage.
(Top photo: George Wood/Getty Images)
