Last season’s Champions League final was one sign. The outcome of European soccer’s summer trading window — which closed earlier this week — was yet another. The continent’s old guard is in retreat, and in their place a new cash-rich elite has fully arrived.

In a market battered by the lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic, only teams backed by the world’s super rich have been able to trade freely this year, fluffing up their already plump rosters with the cream of the game’s talent. In contrast, many of the traditional heavyweights of the game scrambled to make sales to balance books weighed down by losses and ballooning debts.