…Players moving from Nigeria to Benin represented the largest transfer stream between any two associations as there were 23 such moves in 2023
WED, JAN 31 2024-theGBJournal| FIFA on Tuesday published the 2023 edition of the Global Transfer Report, according to which an all-time record of 74,836 cross-border transfers were made in 2023.
Some 23,689 (31.7%) of these moves involved professionals (men and women), with the other 51,147 (68.3%) transfers being those of amateurs.
Last year, and for the first-ever time, more than 1,000 clubs – 1,024 to be precise – spent money on international transfers, according to the report.
The number of clubs (1,241) that received transfer fees also reached a new high. Almost all of the transfer fees last year were either fixed fees (83.7%) or conditional fees (16.1%), and just 0.1% of all fees were declared as release (buy-out) fees.
Following falls in spending in both 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, clubs spent a new record high amount on international transfer fees in 2023, with their combined outlay reaching a total of USD 9.63 billion – an increase of 48.1% compared to 2022 and surpassing the former record, set in 2019, by more than USD 2 billion.
The top ten player transfers alone generated more than 10% of the entire amount spent on transfer fees in 2023. Similarly, of the 3,279 transfers that included fees, the top 100 were responsible for more than 45% of all money spent on transfer fees, with English clubs once again topping the list with USD 2.96 billion.
German clubs topped the list for transfer fees received from outgoing transfers with a total of more than USD 1.2 billion.
Just as in the previous year, Portuguese clubs completed more incoming transfers than clubs from any other association (1,017).
Brazilian clubs, on the other hand, released the highest number of players (1,217). A total of 1,024 clubs spent money on international transfers in 2023, the first-ever time that more than 1,000 clubs invested in transfer fees for new players from abroad. The number of clubs that received transfer fees, 1,241, was also another new high.
The impressive growth of women’s professional football also showed no sign of letting up in 2023, with more than 20% more transfers last year compared to 2022. The number of clubs involved in international transfers also rose from 507 in 2022 to 623 in 2023, a 22.9% increase.
All of these numbers reflect the huge strides being taken in the women’s game, with more and more female players turning professional. Some 1,888 international transfers of professional players were recorded in 2023, while a new high of 131 associations (+7.4% compared to 2022) were involved in these transfers.
In 2023, more than 50,000 amateur players moved across borders to join a club in a new association. Some 91.7% of these players were male. The global reach of amateur football is striking as 207 of FIFA’s 211 member associations were involved in at least one amateur transfer last year. The number-one association in terms of the number of incoming amateur transfers was Germany with a total of 7,825.
The top ten associations for incoming and outgoing transfers were predominantly European, but associations from Concacaf, CONMEBOL, the AFC and CAF also featured.
In fact, players moving from Nigeria to Benin represented the largest transfer stream
between any two associations as there were 23 such moves in 2023, the second year in a row that transfers from one African association to another represented the number-one transfer stream.
The Global Transfer Report 2023 also includes analyses on player nationalities, ages and movement between confederations and associations, in addition to the list of top transfers in both the men’s and women’s game.
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