FIFA has confirmed that football clubs spent a record £1.27bn on new players during the January transfer window.
The football governing body on Thursday revealed that an all-time high number of international deals took place last month.
In the women’s game, the total number of international transfers also reached a new all-time high with 341 across borders, an increase of 30.2% compared to January 2022. A total of £637,914 was spent in the recent window, a new record.
According to FIFA’s International Transfer Snapshot for January 2023, a total of 4,387 international transfers were completed in men’s football in January, the most since the launch of the Transfer Matching System in 2010.
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The £1.27bn spent on transfer fees was some £189m more than the previous January window record in 2018. Domestic transfers in England are not included in the total.
The number of transfers in men’s football increased by 14.4% compared to the same period in 2022, with the total value of transfer fees rising by 49.4% compared to the amount spent in January 2022.
English clubs topped the table for spending on international transfer fees in January 2023 with a total outlay of £740.3m which is 57.3% of total spending in January globally followed at a considerable distance by France with £108.7m.