THE increasing Chinese threat to Premier League clubs has been revealed in a new Fifa report on global transfers.
Although English clubs ranked No 1 in spending — with a huge £1.088billion last year — the moneybags Chinese Super League clubs increased theirs by almost 17 TIMES on their 2013 figure.
The report stated: “As a result of significant transfers of players from Europe to the Chinese Super League, spending by Chinese clubs was the talk of the football world.
“Their spending skyrocketed to £358.1million.
“China went from ranking 20th in 2013 to 5th in 2016.
“The rapid nature of this growth is unprecedented.”
Thirteen Premier League clubs broke their transfer record this summer, but China’s spending has seen them overtake more traditional football hotbeds like France, Portugal and Russia to move into fifth on spending table.
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Fifa’s Transfer Matching System (TMS) reveals that transfer spending – and the amount of players moving clubs – shows no signs of slowing down as more money continues to flow into the game.
Global transfer fees are now worth a staggering £3.8bn, up 14.3 per cent on a year earlier.
The amount of done deals went over 14,000 for the first time, with a total of 14,591 completed.
European clubs again made up the bulk of the spending with 82.1 per cent of the total (£3.12bn), but there was heavy spending elsewhere.
China is the obvious place but Russian clubs also increased their spending by 383 per cent (to £90.61m) and South American clubs as a whole (In Conmebol) increased spending by 84.2 per cent to 145m.
Spanish clubs were the biggest sellers, filling their combined coffers by £440.36m.
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