Algeria's Mahrez part of Manchester City's historic billion dollar squad

Algeria’s Riyad Mahrez is one of Africa’s top players that are part of the historic Manchester City squad which has been named as the first team to have spent more than 1 million euros to assemble their squad.

Data from the Swiss-based CIES Football Observatory showed that City have spent $1.1 billion (1.014 billion euros) on their current squad.

Mahrez himself moved to Manchester City from Leicester City for $72m.

French champions Paris St-Germain were second having also spent a little over $1 billion (913 million euros) and Spain’s Real Madrid were third with $992m.

Manchester United at $826m have the second-most expensive squad in the Premier League followed by Champions League winners Liverpool at $702m.

The Premier League average was $379m, it said.

At the other end of the scale, Germany’s Paderborn had the cheapest squad in the study ($4.3m), which looked at teams from the English, German, Italian, French and Spanish top flights.

Manchester City has also featured several top African players including Ivorians Yaya and Kolo Toure, and Togo’s Emmanuel Adebayor.

Adebayor’s move to City in 2009 for a fee believed to be about £25 million, made him one of Africa’s most expensive transfers at the time.