English clubs top world spending list in Fifa transfer report

Football clubs spent a record $6.37bn (€5.1bn) on transfers in 2017, with teams from the English Premier League again laying out more money than their rivals, according to a new report released by Fifa, the sport’s global governing body.


The global figure represents an increase of 32.7 per cent on the 2016 outlay. Some 15,624 transfers took place internationally in 2017, 6.8 per cent more than in 2016.

Only 15.8 per cent of transactions involved fees, however, with the remaining 84.2 per cent of deals being free transfers. Fifa also noted that about two thirds (67.4 per cent) of the $6.37bn spent came from only 50 clubs representing 13 member associations.

Premier League clubs accumulated a net spend of $988m. Significant deals that took place involving Premier League clubs included Romelu Lukaku’s £75m (€85.3m/$106.3m) move from Everton to Manchester United and Alvaro Morata’s (pictured) £60m transfer to Chelsea from Spanish LaLiga outfit Real Madrid.

The most high-profile deal of 2017 saw French Ligue 1 football club Paris Saint-Germain sign Brazilian forward Neymar for a world-record fee of €222m from LaLiga team Barcelona.

The average transfer fee rose from $35.2m in 2016 to $48.4m in 2017, while fees paid to agents last year amounted to $447m, compared to $387m in 2016.

The data published in the Fifa Global Transfer Market Report is extracted from the International Transfer Matching System (ITMS), which is used by all 211 Fifa member associations globally and over 7,000 professional football clubs for the international transfer of professional footballers.

The report comes as the January transfer window closes on Wednesday, 31st January, 2018. The biggest transfer today has been Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s departure from German Bundesliga team Borussia Dortmund to Premier League outfit Arsenal in a club record £56m deal.