France — the leader in academy player sales: nearly €4 billion over ten years

The CIES Football Observatory research center has published a new ranking of countries whose clubs earned the most from transfers of players trained in their academies over the past decade.

France is the absolute leader — clubs from Ligue 1 and the lower divisions earned a total of €3.98 billion from international sales of academy graduates (including bonuses and sell-on clauses). That’s nearly €400 million per year.

Brazil ranks second (€2.60 billion), followed by Spain (€2.24 billion). Clubs from Portugal, the Netherlands, England, Germany, Italy, and Argentina also earned over one billion euros each.

Experts paid particular attention to the players’ age. Nearly one-third of all revenues came from players under 20 — in some countries, young talents move abroad before they even make a name in senior football.

The highest share of under-20 player sales was recorded in:
Serbia — 64.7%,
Brazil — 50.1%,
Denmark — 48.4%,
Sweden — 47.9%,
Belgium — 43.8%.

These figures show how quickly major European clubs buy promising youngsters from academies before they become stars in their domestic leagues.

Poland, the USA, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and Morocco also made the top 50 — a sign of how global the business of developing and selling young players has become.

Russia ranked 31st — higher than Japan but below Ecuador, Paraguay, Romania, and Scotland.
Over the past ten years, Russian clubs earned €107 million from academy player sales.

The age structure of these sales is as follows:
16.4% — under 20,
38% — aged 21–23,
38% — aged 24–26,
6% — over 27.

Georgia also made the ranking, in 49th place. More than 60% of Georgian clubs’ revenues came from transfers of players aged 21–23, another 34.6% from under-20 players, and just 4.7% from older ones.