More Lies from Der Spiegel
By: Ted Fred Franky, Refuting misinformation, January 16, 2024 6 months ago
Or is it just lazy reporting, they know they can get away with?
After being exposed as a bunch of frauds, it seems Der Spiegel still wants to attack Manchester City by printing yet more lies, allowable under weak German defamation laws.
In this article Sponsorship Money – Paid for by the State published on 07 April 2022, Der Spiegel make a number of misleading claims.
Firstly, that City have spent more money on players than any other club in the last 10 years (2022). They quote the CIES Football Observatory who claim City have spent 1.7 Billion Euros. However, this figure cannot be true. It does not reflect the actual amount spent. This is because the variation of the exchange rate between the Euro and Sterling has a massive impact on these figures. Transfermarkt quotes the fees paid in Euros at the time of the sales as:
| Year | Spent | Received | Net |
| 2022 | 138.90 | 93.80 | 45.10 |
| 2021 | 173.40 | 64.00 | 109.40 |
| 2020 | 169.82 | 71.00 | 98.82 |
| 2019 | 78.59 | 57.60 | 20.99 |
| 2018 | 317.50 | 91.35 | 226.15 |
| 2017 | 216.25 | 35.35 | 180.90 |
| 2016 | 208.47 | 67.44 | 141.03 |
| 2015 | 102.80 | 30.30 | 72.50 |
| 2014 | 115.30 | 11.30 | 104.00 |
| 2013 | 61.95 | 44.30 | 17.65 |
| Total | 1582.98 | 566.44 | 1016.54 |
Example: Kevin De Bruyne Transfer on 30 August 2015
The fee was widely reported at the time as £54m, and based on the exchange rate at the time (0.725) this is 74.48m Euros. TransferMarkt list it as 75m Euros. So this is fairly close. He was signed on a Sunday when the markets were closed, so we will never know the actual exchange rate used. Today the exchange rate is 0.87, so 75m Euros, today is worth £65.25m. As far as numerous articles are concerned these days, you see the transfer fee for Kevin De Bruyne quoted as £60m, £65m sometimes £70m depending on what the current rate is. The fact that City trade in Sterling, and paid in Sterling seems to be wasted on these people, becuase they do not understand simple mathematics. The only way to arrive at an accurate firgure is to use the exchange rate at the time. To return this to Sterling is very cumbersome and time consuming to do, as there are over 100 players bought in ths period.
The lowest the exchange rate in the last 10 years was 0.7081 in 2015, and the highest it has been is 0.9397 in 2019. So it would be safe to say the the actual amount spent by City in Sterling, is somewhere between the following:-
1,582.98m Euros / 0.9397 = £1,121m
1,582.98m Euros / 0.7081 = £1,487m
If you convert these figures into Euros at the current rate you get:
£1,121m / 0.87 = 1,288m Euros
£1.487m / 0.87 = 1,709m Euros!
Hold on, if the TransferMarkt figures are true, the maximum it could possibly be at today’s exchange rate is 1.7B Euros?
So you can see that the CIES Football Observatory, in one of their many boring reports, probably cited City as spending as much as 1.7B Euros. Then Der SPiegel has deliberately reported this as the actual spend, without checking their facts. They don’t have to under German law, if someone else has stated it, then they can publish it as fact, even if they know it is not true!
It’s all about building a body of false evidence to support the other false allegations they make based on their Wiki-lies ie Football Leaks.
