More transfers than ever before, significantly increased expenses: The football transfer market is booming. An old acquaintance from England spends by far the most money, while Portugal and Brazil make people sit up and take notice. The war in Ukraine is also leaving its mark.
Antony for 95 million euros. Casemiro for 70.5 million euros. Lisandro Martinez for 57 million euros. 240.3 million euros in total. No team put more money on the table for signings than Manchester United last year. The Red Devils are thus symbolic of a trend reversal on the international transfer market: the money is flowing in streams again, the consequences of the corona pandemic seem to have been overcome.
71,002 players changed teams across borders in 2022 - more than ever before. This included changes from professional players (21,764) as well as from amateurs (49,238). This emerges from the Global Transfer Report 2022, which was published by the world football association FIFA.
At around six billion euros, spending on international transfers significantly exceeded the figures for the two previous years. "That's 33.5 percent more than in 2021, but still significantly less than the record year 2019," said FIFA Legal and Compliance Director Emilio Garcia Silvero. At that time, 6.78 billion euros were spent on international transfers.
Manchester United are not alone in England with their Croesus transfers. Overall, English teams spent a record €2 billion on international transfers - almost as much as Italy, Spain, France and Germany in second to fifth place combined.
Most of the money flowed into the coffers of French teams: players like Lucas Paqueta (from Lyon to West Ham), Benoit Badiashile (from Monaco to Chelsea) or Sven Botman (from Lille to Newcastle) each switched for sums well in excess of 30 million stamp to the island, a total of 327 million euros migrated from England to France. In second place in this respect is the Bundesliga, of course led by Manchester City goalgetter Erling Haaland, who came from Dortmund for 60 million euros in the summer.
Bundesliga clubs are also heavily involved in player transfer spending, spending €496m, according to the report, behind clubs in England, Italy (€620m), Spain (€546m) and France (€502m). ). By far the highest sums were paid by clubs from the European football association UEFA for international transfers last year - and this is already clear from this list. European teams spent a total of 5.42 billion euros on cross-border transfers in 2022 - more than 90 percent of the global total.
The figures also show that the consequences of the Ukraine war are felt even on the international transfer market. No club had to send more players abroad in 2022 than the Ukrainian first division club Shakhtar Donetsk. A total of 51 players left the club - most of them without bringing the Ukrainians a penny. In June 2022, FIFA ruled that foreign players or coaches in Ukraine could terminate their contracts due to the Russian invasion. Donetsk then tried to sue FIFA for millions in damages before the International Court of Arbitration for Sport CAS. However, the lawsuit was dismissed.
In Russia, too, the war is evidently having an impact on transfers: 62 players left the country in 2022 for Kazakhstan, which is usually less known for its thriving professional football. Globally, there were more international transfers between only six countries than between the two neighboring countries on the Caspian Sea.
The clear number one in this statistic are meanwhile Brazil and Portugal. A total of 338 players ventured across the Atlantic to Portugal in 2022. And there was also plenty of activity in the opposite direction: With 166 transfers, transfers from Portugal to Brazil took second place in these statistics.
The Brazilian-Portuguese "partnership" particularly stands out because the two countries are not direct neighbors, unlike Belgium and France, Croatia and Slovenia, or Germany and Austria, all of which are also represented in the top ten. Obviously, many Brazilians dare the step to Europe, but above all via the country where the same language is spoken as in their home country. In 2022, these included 19-year-old winger Gabriel Veron (from Palmeiras to FC Porto) and central defender Joao Victor (from Corinthians to Benfica).
The ten most expensive transfers - including two newcomers from Manchester United, Rodrygo and Casemiro - alone accounted for 12.5 percent of total spending. There are also two with Bundesliga participation among them. On the one hand, Haaland's change, on the other hand, the transfer of Matthijs de Ligt from Juventus Turin to FC Bayern Munich for 67 million euros.
The number of international transfers among professional women soccer players rose by 19.3 percent to 1,555. With 119, more associations than ever before were involved, emphasized García Silvero. According to the announcement, the number of transfers has even doubled since 2018. FIFA saw this as confirmation of the "impressive growth".
