Monday, August 30, 2021
Transfers in the last ten years
$ 50 billion instead of humility
The transfer summer in the year after the outbreak of the corona pandemic has nothing to do with humility among Europe’s football elite. That is a steadily growing trend. A transfer report from the past ten years reveals breathtaking numbers. A German national player came in 14th there.
Football clubs around the world have spent a total of 48.5 billion dollars (41.12 billion euros) on signing players over the past ten years. This is the result of a study by the world association FIFA. According to this, a total of 133,255 transfers or loan transactions were processed in the professional sector between 2011 and 2020, involving 66,789 players and 8,264 clubs.
Without giving exact numbers, FIFA evaluates Neymar’s move from FC Barcelona to Paris St. Germain 2017 with a transfer fee of over 200 million dollars as the most expensive transfer to date. This is followed by 13 changes with a volume of more than 100 million dollars each, including, surprisingly, that of the Portuguese Renato Sanches from Benfica Lisbon to Bayern Munich in 2016.
The most expensive German player was therefore Kai Havertz. When he moved from Bayer Leverkusen to Chelsea in 2020, he was also included in the “Transfer of more than 100 million dollars” category and came in 14th overall. According to the FIFA study, the most expensive transfer involving a German club is Ousmane Dembélé’s move from Borussia Dortmund to FC Barcelona 2017 (4th place).
The players most often involved in transfers were from Brazil (15,128), Argentina (7444), Great Britain (5523), France (5027) and Colombia (4287). With 1916 changes, German players are in 18th place. During the study period, German clubs spent $ 4.4 billion on transfer deals (4th place). The largest expenditure was recorded by the British at 12.4 billion dollars.
30, without exception, European clubs, including twelve from England, spent almost half of the total transfer fee during the period of the study. The average transfer fee peaked at $ 17.8 million in 2018, most recently falling to $ 14.4 million. The highest spending was recorded by Manchester City (130 additions) ahead of Chelsea FC (90) and FC Barcelona (75). Bayern Munich follows in 11th place (64).
Most of the revenue came from Benfica Lisbon (311 sales / loans) and local rivals Sporting (226). Borussia Dortmund follows in 12th place (69). Most of the pure loan transactions were handled by Manchester City (232), Chelsea (207) and Benfica (189). During the same period, FC Albirex Niigata from Singapore signed a record 160 free transfer players.
According to the study by FIFA, agent commissions have risen sharply. They went up from $ 131 million to $ 640.5 million.
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