ZURICH: A FIFA report has stated that global transfer total in 2016 rose by 14.3pc with spending by Chinese Super League clubs having climbed to $451.3m.

The report, from the Transfer Matching Systsem, details that the total money spent on transfer fees around the world in 2016 was $4.79bn. This was  the largest increase since 2013. Only 14.4pc of worldwide transfers involved the payment of a fee.

The $451.3m spent by Chinese clubs is more than 2.5 times the amount spent in 2015 and is a result of teams investing heavily on high-profile foreign imports. The figure is 344.4 per cent more than the rest of the Asian Football Confederation region combined.

Clubs in the South American confederation (CONMEBOL) spent $182.6m on transfers in 2016, an 84.2 per cent increase on the previous year.

European clubs accounted for 82.1pc ($3.93bn) of all spending on transfer fees.

England’s Premier League ranked first in spending on incoming transfers with $1.37bn – an 8.7 per cent increase on 2015. That figure also accounts for over 43 per cent of the total spending across the top five European leagues – the Premier League, German Bundesliga, Spanish LaLiga, Italian Serie A and French Ligue 1.

Russian clubs spent $114.1m – a 383 per cent increase on 2015, while Spanish clubs received $554.5m from outgoing transfers – a 49.5 per cent increase on the previous year.

In total, 14,591 transfer deals were completed in 2016, with the figure surpassing the 14,000 mark for the first time. In 2015, 13,601 deals completed.

The report also reveals that 879 transfers occurred between countries that had never before completed a single transfer together since the introduction of the International Transfer Matching System (ITMS) in 2010.

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