Most Brazilian soccer players dream of making it to a top European club. However, these days some of the country’s most promising players are heading to a very different sporting nation.
China is fast becoming the new destination for some of Brazil’s best players, rather than the English Premier League, Spain’s La Liga or the Bundesliga in Germany.
Thanks to hefty investments to boost soccer in the Asian country, Chinese teams have become much more attractive to Brazilian and South American players, making high salary offers that overshadow the players’ desire to move to better clubs in Europe.
China was the country that has spent the most on transfers from Brazilian clubs so far this year, topping nearly US$40 million in the signing of nine South American players, including two from Brazil’s national team.
“China is trying to become a global player in the sport, it wants to become relevant internationally,” said Fernando Ferreira, head of the Brazilian sports consultancy firm Pluri. “And signing some of the best players in Brazil is part of this process, it’s part of the strategy. They are coming to Brazil to gather ‘raw material,’ to find ‘skilled labor.’”
China has been steadily ramping up investments on foreign players and is the third country with the highest spending on international transfers this year, according to numbers released through FIFA’s transfer matching system, behind Germany (US$118 million) and England (US$174 million).
Chinese clubs have spent more than US$85 million on the international market through March 17, FIFA said, more than five times what it spent in 2013. They have already spent nearly US$7 million more this year than in all last year.
Ukraine, Italy and Spain were the countries that spent the most to recruit players from Brazilian clubs between 2011 and last year, but now they are all about to be surpassed by China. It has become harder for other markets to compete with the Chinese, especially for second-tier players not usually targeted by big-spending teams such as Barcelona, Real Madrid or Chelsea. These players are now getting better offers from China than from the smaller European clubs that had been signing them.
“Players worth 3 or 4 million euros [US$3.18 million or US$4.23 million] to teams in Europe now are being signed for about 10 million [euros] in China,” Ferreira said.
“Some European countries are not being able to sign as many players as before, and China has emerged as a new market, investing in football and taking away the best players and coaches to try to improve their game,” Brazil coach Dunga said. “We have to adapt to this the best way we can.”
Striker Diego Tardelli this year became the first player from a Chinese club to be picked for Brazil’s national team. He was considered one of the top prospects in the country when he made the move to Shandong Luneng instead of taking up other deals that could have increased his profile.
Before accepting the transfer, Tardelli said he called Dunga to ask if he would risk losing his place in the national team by going to a country that lacks a soccer tradition.
“I told him that I won’t analyze a player just by taking into consideration where he is playing, I’ll analyze him based on his performance,” Dunga said. “But we have to understand that there will be more pressure on these players. If they don’t play well, people will quickly say that it’s because they went to a country where football is not as competitive.”
Tardelli said he will still be able to play at a top level in China.
“I’m not too worried, we play in some high-level competitions here,” he told Brazil’s SporTV. “Maybe the technical quality is not the same as in Brazil and Europe, but it’s not going to be a problem.”
Another high-profile Brazilian to move to Chinese soccer was 23-year-old playmaker Ricardo Goulart, who helped Cruzeiro win two-straight Brazilian league titles and was being looked at closely by some top European clubs after making his debut with Brazil last year.
Goulart’s reported US$16.2 million move to Guangzhou Evergrande was the biggest transaction involving a Brazilian club in the latest transfer window, and the highest ever for a Brazilian player going to China.
With Brazilian clubs contend with financial problems, it is difficult for players to reject big transfer fees and monthly salaries of about US$350,000, nearly three times more than local clubs can afford to pay their top players. Established stars such as Neymar still make a lot more in the top European clubs, especially including earnings with sponsors and other endorsements.
Other players who left Brazilian clubs this year for the high salaries in China include Argentines Hernan Barcos and Dario Conca, as well as Bolivia’s Marcelo Moreno.
About 30 percent of the foreign players in China’s Super League are Brazilians or came from Brazilian clubs.
“This is going to continue for some time,” Ferreira said. “China will continue to be an attractive market to football players and we can only assume that the country will eventually succeed in its quest to become a world power in football.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier