Atletico Madrid's Starting XI cost less than Chelsea's Eden Hazard

Atletico Madrid’s squad cost almost 1/7th of Chelsea’s squad

After Atletico Madrid beat Chelsea 3-1 at Stamford Bridge in the second leg of the Champions League semi-final, Jose Mourinho got a lot of flak for fielding a defensive line-up in spite of the club having spent millions in the transfer market.

Chelsea were supposed to be the bigger side and take the game to the opposition. Instead, Mourinho decided to shut shop and only attack on the counter – a strategy that didn’t give him an away goal in the first leg and gave Atletico the advantage in the second.

After being comprehensively beaten, we take a look at exactly how much each team spent on their XIs. The final numbers are startling, to say the least and makes you wonder whether this was what Roman Abramovich had in mind when he spent a large fortune on the club and the team.

Atletico Madrid and Chelsea XI comparison

While most of the transfer amounts are straightforward, some need to be explained.

• Ashley Cole came to Chelsea after the Blues paid Arsenal £5m and traded William Gallas in a ‘player plus cash’ deal. The entire deal was approximated to be worth £18m.
• David Luiz cost a total of £25.5m if you include Nemanja Matic’s transfer market value at the time.

As we can see, Atletico Madrid’s entire squad cost less than Eden Hazard. Or even Willian. We don’t even have to bring Torres into the picture!