Those who have been passionate about football for a long time have witnessed various trends in the influx of money into the sport. I started following football in the early 2000s. The best clubs in the world have always been European teams. European football is the benchmark, and it is the leagues of the top European countries that many nations around the world aspire to broadcast. By European champions, I primarily mean the top five leagues: England, Italy, Spain, Germany, and France. It is no surprise why these leagues dominate world football; these countries are among the most developed in the world. They have the best training facilities, high salaries, rich traditions, and great histories of their teams. Many talents emerge in these countries and become stars of world football, while those who grow up in other countries, especially on different continents, aspire to move to Europe and play in one of these leading leagues.
Around the early 2010s, billionaires from Arab countries began to enter the world of European football. They started acquiring some European clubs and buying stars from other teams for outrageous sums of money to make their teams the strongest. Since then, the world of European football has gone somewhat crazy in terms of player valuations, and the prices of footballers have skyrocketed. In principle, considering global inflation, the value of footballers has indeed increased every decade. However, with the arrival of Arab investors in Europe, the situation changed even more dramatically.
A few years later, Chinese billionaires entered the scene. Some of them also tried their luck in financing European football, but others took a different route and began investing money in their own domestic football league. Many European footballers were lured by Chinese owners who offered contracts with enormous salaries to move to their homeland. Some global football stars playing in Europe succumbed to this temptation and moved to China, particularly towards the end of their careers, to earn substantial money before “retirement.” However, the percentage of these players was still quite small.
Around the same time, American investors also joined the game. In fact, they had been owning some European clubs for a while and a few were even willing to finance European football. But now a new trend emerged: offering football stars large salaries in their clubs in the United States. Many players, at the end of their careers, eagerly head to the States to spend a couple more seasons in a less competitive league, where they could earn a lot of money and still play at a high level for the local league. Moreover, more stars generally move to America than to China.
In recent years, alongside the United States and China, Arab countries have once again become active (approximately a few years before the World Cup in Qatar). Now, they are not only continuing to invest in clubs they own in Europe but are also offering huge sums of money to footballers to play in Arab leagues. Cristiano Ronaldo, for instance, also received a very lucrative contract and moved to one of the Arab countries towards the end of his career.
However, for over ten years, China, the United States, and Arab countries have been trying to lure players from the top five European football leagues to their leagues. Yet, this effort has not been successful so far. The leading leagues in these countries struggle to attract viewers. This might be because the clubs in these countries lack traditions and a rich history, perhaps because players often go there to finish their careers, or possibly because there is no Champions League. Most likely, all of these factors are at play simultaneously. Rarely do talents emerge from these countries that become global stars and whom fans would want to follow from the start of their careers. Can you name even a couple of well-known Chinese footballers or players from the United States, or, say, from Saudi Arabia? Most likely, they can be counted on one hand.
But the situation is completely different with Brazil and Argentina. These countries are quite poor compared to the top European leagues and even more so compared to the top 3-4 wealthy countries mentioned earlier. Brazil, Argentina, and some other Latin American countries live and breathe football. Kids play football in the streets 24/7 from a young age, resulting in some of them becoming stars of world football, and European clubs are ready to pay hefty sums for these young talents. Players like Messi, Neymar, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, and many other talents made their way to Europe. Some moved at a very young age, while others did so in the prime of their careers. Latin America has its own tournament analogous to the Champions League—the Copa Libertadores—which is clearly more prestigious than the Asian Champions League and all possible Asian, North American, and Arab tournaments. Latin American clubs also have a rich history, but it is mostly confined to their own countries or, at most, their continent. Every year, the winners of the European Champions League and the Copa Libertadores face off to determine which club is the strongest in the world for that year. However, European teams usually emerge victorious. These victories are not overwhelmingly dominant or crushing, but generally, with a slight advantage, Europeans almost always come out on top. This is not surprising, as Europe, compared to Latin America, has the financial resources to buy good players, including those from Latin American clubs, hire the best coaches and medical staff, and provide the most suitable and comfortable conditions for footballers. In national team competitions at the World Cup, Latin American countries like Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay consistently challenge European nations for the title of World Champion. Moreover, these countries even have more World Cup victories than some great European teams. Many Latin American footballers, gaining experience playing in top European clubs, come together at the World Cup and represent their countries on the global stage. The Argentine national team recently proved this again by winning the 2022 World Cup. Despite having acquaintances who actively follow the Brazilian and Argentine championships, the overwhelming majority of fans focus on the top European countries. The message of this article, which I have been leading up to throughout the text, is to make you think about what world football could look like if Latin American countries like Brazil and Argentina were rich, economically and politically developed, and could compete on equal footing with European nations. As I mentioned earlier, these countries have everything or almost everything needed to compete for viewers' attention worldwide: a passion for football, talents and stars, a history of clubs and tournaments, and an international history of victories. Perhaps, in such a scenario, it wouldn't be Messi who moved to Europe at a young age, but Mbappé who, instead of choosing PSG after Monaco, would have preferred to continue his career in Latin America. However, we will never know this for sure, but it would be interesting if one day the championships of Latin American countries were as competitive as those in Europe.
