50m price tag makes Sane most expensive German

Manchester City’s 50m signing of Leroy Sane from Schalke made the 20-year-old the most expensive German footballer of all time.

The fee paid by City eclipsed the 44m paid by Arsenal to Real Madrid for Mesut Ozil in 2013 and was more than the 38m paid this year by Bayern Munich to Dortmund for defender Mats Hummels.

The Sane deal means that English clubs have spent in excess of 400m on Bundesliga players in the past two years. Manchester City alone have spent 162 million on three Bundesliga players (Sane, Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne) in the past 12 months.

Already this summer, Bundesliga players have moved to England at a cost of 199million. In addition to Sane, they include Granit Xhaka (Borussia Monchengladbach to Arsenal, 45m), Henrikh Mkhitaryan (Borussia Dortmund to Manchester United, 42m), Gundogan (Borussia Dortmund to Manchester City, 27m), PierreEmile Hojbjerg (Bayern Munich to Southampton, 15m) and Loris Karius (Mainz to Liverpool, 6m).

Players also moved within the Bundesliga for large sums. In addition to the 38m for Hummels to Bayern, Andre Schurrle joined Dortmund from Wolfsburg for 30m and Mario Gotze left Bayern to return to Dortmund in a 26m deal.