MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil “exported” a billion US dollars in football players

Between 1994 and 2005 Brazil exported football players to foreign clubs valued in over a billion US dollars reported the Sunday edition of O Estado de Sao Paulo, one of Brazil's main newspapers.

Furthermore the tendency is for the number of Brazilian players transferred to foreign clubs to keep increasing since in 2005 the value was 55% higher than in 2004.

Although the newspaper also points out that is was an exceptional period particularly with the sale of young star Robinho from Santos to Spain's galactic team: Real Madrid in an estimated figure of 18 million US dollars.

However 2006, a World Cup year, also shows an interesting surge with football players "exports" representing 25 million US dollars for Brazil, according to the latest report from the Central Bank.

Brazil' Football Confederation statistics confirm that Brazil is the largest market for overseas clubs looking for promising football stars at relatively cheap prices.

In 2005 a total of 804 Brazilian football players were transferred overseas, a slight drop from 2004 with 857.

Of that number 40 went to Japan; 20 to Germany; 15 to Saudi Arabia; 14 to Venezuela; 12 to United States; 9 to Iran; 7 to Austria; 6 to Bosnia-Herzegovina; 5 to China; 5 to Hong Kong and 3 to Angola with the rest to other countries in all continents.