The Birmingham club’s five-man group of Douglas Luiz, Emiliano Buendía, Diego Carlos, Emiliano Martínez and Philippe Coutinho all have an estimated market value between EUR 20 and 30m. Lower down, among the familiar names of other European top clubs, Aston Villa FC may be a surprising inclusion. Age is one of the main factors here as the average age of PSG’s six is 30, while that of Real’s is only 23.5 years.Īmong these 10 clubs, it is also notable that Atlético de Madrid have the most South American players in their squad (nine). Interestingly, the six South American players of Real Madrid are worth almost twice as much as the six players of Paris Saint-Germain FC (including Neymar and Messi). Tottenham Hotspur are in third place – their South American contingent having been recently boosted by the signing of Richarlison from Everton FC the Brazilian forward is currently valued at EUR 61m. They are followed by Liverpool FC, who also had two players in the overall top 10 ranking by market value. In addition to Vinícius Jr., four other Brazilians (Rodrygo, Éder Militão, Casemiro and Reinier) and Uruguayan midfielder Federico Valverde are on their books, too. Moving on to club-level analysis, we find that – by quite some margin – Real Madrid CF have the highest total squad value attributed to South American players. Liverpool FC’s Darwin Núñez and Luis Díaz are both from the Portuguese Primeira Liga, Arsenal FC signed Gabriel Jesus from Manchester City to lead their attack in the new season, while Raphinha was prized away from Leeds United FC by FC Barcelona as one of their many new signings. There are four players in the top 10 who changed clubs in 2022 and signed long-term contracts, contributing to their high valuation. Vinícius is also currently the fourth most valuable footballer globally, and also boasts the highest value increase since the start of the 2021/22 season, according to our market value estimates. The young winger and his 22 goals across all club competitions were instrumental in Real Madrid winning the LaLiga and UEFA Champions League double. There are no fewer than six who made the top 10, including Vinícius Júnior, who is the runaway leader with a EUR 136m valuation. The ranking of the 10 most valuable South American players according to the Football Benchmark models also confirms the prevalence of Brazilian talent in these leagues. It is worth mentioning that Bolivia were the only CONMEBOL nation without a single representative player in Europe’s top leagues at the time of writing.

Regular World Cup participants Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia follow them in this ranking. Which South American nations provided the most players? As the chart shows, there were almost 100 Brazilians plying their trade in these five leagues. Other confederations and regions, such as Asia, Oceania or North and Central America, were far behind in this regard.

Not counting European nationalities, only Africa (CAF) had more players than that (246 in total). Our data reveal that in early July 2022 there were 218 players from South America (CONMEBOL) at European “Big Five” league clubs. Finally, it is important to note that players of South American origin who are now playing for a national team of another continent were excluded from the analysis (e.g., Jorginho was born in Brazil but has dual citizenship and is now a member of Italy’s national team). Transfers of the currently ongoing transfer window that were officially announced before 18 July were taken into account (e.g., Raphinha is accounted for as an FC Barcelona player for the purposes of this article). The estimated market values for South American footballers playing in the English Premier League, the German Bundesliga, the Spanish LaLiga, the French Ligue 1 and Italian Serie A in our overview refer to July 2022 and are based on our proprietary algorithms ( whose methodology you can read about here). In this article, we assess the phenomenon from various perspectives. The best South American players are no exception, as most of them are generally found in one of the so-called “Big Five” leagues.

The financial disparity between European clubs and the rest of the world perpetuates a “talent drain” system, through which many players move to Europe at a very young age and spend their prime career years there. Following the liberalisation and globalisation of the transfer market in the ‘90s, their number has exploded and nowadays there are practically no leagues in the UEFA region without at least one expatriate South American player. South American footballers have been an integral part of football in Europe for many decades now.

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