Identifying patterns in young players´ transfers - is there a main feeding country for football talent

Abstract

This paper aims to identify patterns in talent football transfers and wants to determine the most exporting talent-productive countries, using a data set of transferred talents from transfermarkt.de, with the goal of informing the Portuguese Football Federation. The research follows a quantitative approach, combining existing literature. With analysing 9,279 transfers and comparing them to the state of the art, European and Southern American countries (Portugal, France, Spain, Argentina, and Brazil) show the strongest indicators for successful talent exports. They seem to build talents with an above-average market value that bring top-tier transfer fees.