Real Madrid overpaid £30m for Gareth Bale... and Marouane Fellaini, Fernandinho, Willian, Erik Lamela and Roberto Soldado are among Europe's top ten over-valued players

• Gareth Bale is valued at £50.9m, according to experts at the CIES Football Observatory
• Monaco's Radamel Falcao and Asier Illarramendi of Real Madrid complete the top three most over-valued plyers
  
• Premier League players Marouane Fellaini, Erik Lamela, Fernandinho, Willian and Roberto Soldado also feature

By Nick Harris for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 19:26 EDT, 3 June 2014 | Updated: 06:18 EDT, 4 June 2014

Gareth Bale’s £80million price tag when he moved from Tottenham to Real Madrid last summer caused plenty of eyebrows to be raised, and now a new report suggests the Spanish giants paid almost £30m more than the Welshmen is currently worth - even after becoming a Champions League winner.

Experts at the Swiss-based CIES Football Observatory have placed ‘market values’ on top players from around Europe based on a wide range of ‘objective’ factors from age and contract expiry date to position, performance data and international experience.

They calculate that Bale, 24, is worth ‘only’ £50.9m at market rates based on what a buyer should reasonably pay for him if he moved this summer. That is £29.8m LESS than Real Madrid paid for him last summer.

VIDEO Scroll down to watch Gareth Bale modelling Real Madrid's new strip

Top man: Gareth Bale won the Champions League and the Copa del Rey in his first season at the Bernabeu

Bad buys: Spurs overpaid for both Roberto Soldado (left) and Erik Lamela, says the CIES report

The CIES report says Bale was the ‘worst recruitment’ from a purely financial perspective last season of any player at a club in the top divisions across England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France.

Radamel Falcao of Monaco represents the next most over-valued player, ‘worth’ £25.6m less than Monaco paid for him.

Tottenham’s Erik Lamela, Manchester United’s Marouane Fellaini, Manchester City’s Fernandinho, Chelsea’s Willian and Tottenham’s Roberto Soldado are all in the top 10 of poor value players when considering fees paid and current worth.

‘The comparison between transfer fees paid by clubs to sign new players at the start or during the 2013-14 season and their current market value allows us to assess the best and worst recruitments from a financial perspective,’ the report’s authors say.

‘The highest “negative gap” was recorded for Gareth Bale (minus €37m, or £29.8m). This finding reflects the fact that Real Madrid clearly paid over the odds to convince Tottenham to release the player.’

Out of sorts: Manchester United's Marouane Fellaini (right) also features on the list, coming in at No 5

Money is no object: Manchester City overpaid more than £10m for Fernandinho, says the report

The authors say that at the other extreme, the German striker Max Kruse, 26, was the best buy of last summer. ‘The highest positive gap between fee paid and value now was observed for Max Kruse,’ they say. ‘Borussia Monchengladbach signed him for a bargain from Freiburg thanks to the existence of a very low buy-out clause.

‘His current market value is eight times greater than the €2m fee paid one year ago.’

They say that Manchester United’s Adnan Januzaj is the highest value player who made a debut in 2013-14 who cost nothing to their current club because they were produced by the club academy. They rate him as worth £10m.

Bargain buy: Max Kruse is a steal at 2m euros, says the report

In control: Adnan Januzaj's value is said to be at the £10m mark

More details can be found at www.football-observatory.com