Roberto Firmino of Liverpool Photo: VCG

There may be no football being played in Europe's "Big Five" leagues at the moment but there is no mistake that it is their clubs that will still dominate whatever sports headlines there may be in the meantime and when football makes its return.

Take for example the latest report from the CIES Football Observatory.

The researchers there have valued the top 20 contracted players at every club in those Big Five leagues to value the squads of their member clubs.

What they have found is that there six of them that are worth over a billion euros, when it comes to their playing staff. Here they are in order.

1. Liverpool -1.405 billion euros - Last year No.2

Jurgen Klopp's English Premier League champions elect may never get their trophy or their winners' medals for this season, depending on what happens over the coming months, but they remain the UEFA Champions League holders by the same token.

That form over the last couple of seasons is part of the reason for them being the top valued football club in world football.

This form also saw them run Manchester City to the wire in the Premier League last season - making up a remarkable 98 points from the 2017-18 season when the Blues won the league with the first 100-point season - before amassing a 25-point lead over Pep Guardiola's side this campaign.

Players such as Mohammed Salah, Sadio Mane and homegrown star Trent Alexander-Arnold are ranked by CIES as worth between 150 to 200 million euros each while it would take another world record fee for a defender to prize away Ballon d'Or runner-up Virgil van Dijk from Anfield.

The club had Salah, Mane, Van Dijk and goalkeeper Alisson Becker in last year's Ballon d'Or while the custodian's Brazil teammate and local Liverpool lad Alexander-Arnold joined them in the top 20.

2. Manchester City -1.361 billion euros - Last year No.1



Liverpool's current Premier League rivals run them close when it comes to overall squad value, which is all the more impressive given that despite the influx of investment over recent seasons at the Etihad Stadium manager Pep Guardiola is still reliant on players at the tail end of their careers.

Brazilian Fernandinho, 34, and Spanish star David Silva, 34, and Argentina's Sergio Aguero, 31, are among the higher earners at the club but are unlikely to recover large fees if and when they move on.

Age does not stop Aguero being ranked among the top 20 players in the world - he was No.16 - in the most recent Ballon d'Or, where he is joined by several City teammates.

Bernardo Silva is the highest ranked of them at ninth, with Riyad Mahrez as the only other of the Blues in the top 10 but behind them is England's Raheem Sterling (No.12) and Belgium's Kevin de Bruyne (No.14).

Their values could all rise if the club can realize their Holy Grail and win the UEFA Champions League. They carry a 2-1 advantage from the first leg against Real Madrid - and two vital away goals plus the dismissal and possible suspension of Sergio Ramos for the second leg.

That all depends on the second-leg match will go ahead as planned, of course.

3. Barcelona -1.17 billion euros - Last year No.3

Riding high at the top of La Liga, the Catalan giants will be pleased to find themselves ahead of El Clasico rivals Real Madrid on yet another list.

Quique Setien's side is another that is ageing. Gerard Pique is 33, as is Luis Suarez, Ivan Rakitic is 32 and Sergio Busquets is 31 ­- several of those formed the backbone of the team back when Pep Guardiola made them the most formidable in the world.

Whatever else is going, and there has been such a crisis of injury that they had to get special dispensation to sign striker Danish striker Martin Braithwaite as an emergency transfer after the January transfer window had closed, they can always call on the man from Rosario.

Lionel Messi was once again confirmed as the best player in the world at the Ballon d'Or ceremony, just as he has been five times before. Even at 32, he is one of the most valuable players in world football and it would take an astronomical deal to get him to leave the Camp Nou.

It was a lean year for the rest of the Blaugrana squad. Messi was only joined by Dutch defender Frenkie de Jong (No.11) and France World Cup winner Antoine Griezmann (No.18), who joined the club last summer in a deal worth 120 million euros.

4. Real Madrid -1.1 billion euros - Last year No.9

Barcelona's greatest rivals and the club that defined its last quarter of a century by the Galacticos policy, Real Madrid may have lost the goals of Cristiano Ronaldo but they have not lost the glamour that the Portuguese represented.  

Another ageing team ­- Toni Kroos, Gareth Bale, Luka Modric and Sergio Ramos are all the wrong side of 30 - but there is value in them, still, and the youth prospects that have arrived at the Bernabeu. Brazilian teenagers Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo are chief among those expected to keep increasing in value.

5. Chelsea -1.008 billion euros - Last year No.11

A transfer ban paradoxically helped Chelsea become more valuable as Frank Lampard has shown trust in the club's long list of youth prospects. Mason Mount leads the values (90 to 120 million) of teammates such as Callum Hudson-Odoi and Tammy Abraham who are all set to skyrocket in the future.

6. Manchester United - 1.007 billion euros - Last year No.5

Another list where the Old Trafford side find themselves falling down the list and much like the league table that slide is arrested by Marcus Rashford (150 to 200 million) and Premier League Player of the Month for February Bruno Fernandes (90 to 120 million) - who only arrived on the last day of January for an initial 55 million.

Manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's policy of removing high earners and older players off the books looks set to pay dividends.
Newspaper headline: The billion dollar clubs