January 27 – Eye-watering figures have been released by FIFA which show exactly why Chinese authorities have agreed to reign in spending, impose restrictions on foreign players and help local talent develop.
According to a report by FIFA’s Transfer Matching System, Chinese clubs spent over $450 million on international transfers last year, around two and half times more than the year before.
The increase in investment by the Chinese Super League led the country to the fifth position in the world ranking of FIFA spending, behind England, Germany, Spain and Italy.
In 2013, Chinese clubs spent 26 million euros on international transfers. That figure jumped to $168.3 in 2015 and now to $450 – 344% more than the rest of Asia combined.
The TMS report said Chinese clubs signed 159 players in international transfers in 2016, the bulk of whom came from European clubs.
In an attempt to curb the huge expense, although Chinese teams are still allowed to sign up to five foreign players, only three will in future be able to play at any one time.
“The rapid nature of this growth is unprecedented,” the TMS report said, adding that overall, a total of $4.79 billion was spent on international transfers across the world last year, an increase of 14.3% on 2015.
FIFA TMS IS a subsidiary of FIFA and coordinates all international transfers of professional male 11-a-side footballers with the objective of increasing “integrity and transparency in the market and to ensure all regulatory requirements are met.”
The TMS report throws up some big headline figures showing how the transfer money is moving around the world. English clubs splashed out $1.37 billion, more than twice the next big spenders Germany. The English spend was 43% of the total of Europe’s Big countries of England, Germany, Spain, Italy and France.
UEFA clubs spent $3.93 billions total – 82.1% of all spending on transfer fees. In contrast CONMEBOL clubs spent $182.6 million, but this was an 84.2% increase on 2015.
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