Millions, millions and millions more. No, we are not talking about the Champions League, known as the “Millionaires League”. Every four years, the World Cup is the stage of the biggest football stars and, with the constant increase evaluation of players, involves more and more money for those in the competition. The 2018 World Cup in Russia is no exception.
The sum of market values of all players present in the World Cup translates into astronomical 10045 million euros, according to data from Transfermarkt. However, not all teams contribute in the same way to this final sum.
The most expensive team in the World Cup comes, in fact, from the European continent. With a total value of 1008 million euros, France is officially the most expensive team in the 2018 World Cup. The 1998 world champion have stars such as Griezmann, Mbappé, Kanté and Pogba with a lot of exposure in the world football landscape. The “bleus” are one of the favorites to win the World Cup. In second place, another European team appears: Spain. Names like Isco, David Silva and Sergio Ramos put the spanish national team in the second place of this table. At the bottom of the podium is Brazil. The representative of CONMEBOL is the biggest candidate to conquer the cup, guided by the attack front composed by Neymar and company.
[infogram id=”7b0dca29-1f8e-4af8-8236-7f8d9193df14″ prefix=”sxL” format=”interactive” title=”Teams value in the 2018 World Cup “]
England appears in 5th place, with a total value of 874 million euros (770 million GBP). Harry Kane, with a market value of 150 million euros (132,27 million GBP), makes up a large part of this share, with Dele Ali (100 million euros / 88,15 million GBP) and Marcus Rashford (65 million euros / 57,32 million GBP) in the second and third place of the most expensive national team, respectively. The “Three Lions” appear soon after the class of Lionel Messi, Argentina (693 million euros) and precede Uruguay (372.5 million euros).
On the other side of the coin, Panama is the cheapest team in the World Cup. The “canaleros” are worth only 8.43 million euros, far from the 18.7 million of the second selection with less market value in the world, Saudi Arabia.
[infogram id=”0599a06e-41c7-4d53-a535-b62820b1fbd9″ prefix=”oKJ” format=”interactive” title=”Confederations value in the World Cup”]
On a larger scale, it is possible to verify the dominance of the nations of Europe and South America relative to the value of their players. Europe, represented by UEFA at the football level, is the confederation which has an average value of more expensive selections in the World Cup. In all, the 322 European players in the World Cup are worth 6727.28 million euros, which is equivalent to an average of 480.52 million euros per team. In this ranking, South America (CONMEBOL) appears in second place, with an average of 467.07 million per team, followed by CAF (Africa) with 162.74 average, CONCACAF (North and Central America) with 64.84 and, finally, the AFC (Asia) with 54.16 million on average per team.