Spending on transfer fees in international men’s player deals cooled off during the mid-year trading period, according to FIFA research published on Tuesday.
FIFA said clubs committed to spend $6.46 billion on buying players in cross-border deals during the June-to-September transfer window — down from $7.43 billion in the same period a year ago.
The average of transfer fees paid by clubs in Europe, by far the richest market, was $3.13 million compared to $3.8 million one year ago.
The FIFA study is not a complete guide because it does not count the biggest transfer deal of the European offseason, nor does it include moves by players between two clubs in the same country.
Kylian Mbappe joined Real Madrid without a transfer fee being paid because the France star was a free agent after letting his contract expire at Paris Saint-Germain. Still, Madrid had to pay Mbappe a signing bonus variously reported as between $110 million and $165 million.
The biggest transfer fees in cross-border deals were Julian Alvarez’s move from Manchester City to Atletico Madrid, reported to be about 75 million euros ($83 million) and Leny Yoro from Lille to Manchester United for a reported 62 million euros ($69 million).
The FIFA study does not include deals involving two clubs in the same country where the player’s registration is not transferred between member federations.
Deals in the top-10 biggest transfer fees not counting toward the FIFA figures include Dominic Solanke from Bournemouth to Tottenham, Pedro Neto from Wolves to Chelsea and Teun Koopmeiners from Atalanta to Juventus.
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English clubs were the biggest overall and net spenders with an outlay of $1.69 billion on international transfers, and $1.25 billion recouped. Clubs in England, Italy and Saudi Arabia all had a collective net spending of at least $400 million.
Belgian clubs took a net profit of $302 million, by receiving $412 million from selling players abroad and spending $110 million on players from clubs in other countries, according to FIFA. Those deals included Igor Thiago moving from Club Brugge to Brentford and Ernest Nuamah from Molenbeek to its sister club Lyon.
Clubs from Argentina received about $130 million more than they spent, and Brazilian clubs made a collective profit of $98 million on international deals, FIFA said.
Of the record 11,000 international transfers processed by FIFA in the past three months, most did not include a fee and nearly 6,300 were free agent players.
