Aurélien Tchouaméni, Wesley Fofana, Jules Koundé… This summer again, French players have animated the transfer market, thus confirming the tendency of foreign clubs to bet first on them in recent years. So much so that France could become the main exporter of footballers, ahead of Brazil – the historic leader – in the near future.
According to figures from the CIES Football Observatory, which compiles statistics on the origin of expatriate players, the gap between the number of Brazilians and French present abroad is narrowing each season. This difference has almost halved: in 2017, Brazil expatriated 1,211 footballers, against 770 for France, while in 2022, 1,219 Brazilians went abroad against 978 Tricolores. In the last five years, France has recorded the highest increase (27%) in the world for the number of expatriate players.
Historically a tone below the other four in the hierarchy of the five major European championships, Ligue 1 had to find other means to exist. The solution ? its training centers. An identity which the Professional Football League (LFP) also plays to attract spectators, by promoting Ligue 1 as “The League of Talents”.
“Foreign recruiters are unanimous: the young French player provides guarantees thanks to his trainingjudge Éric Roy, former player and former sports director of the English club Watford. We know that to win in Ligue 1, he must demonstrate tactical skills, technique to play in small spaces and good physical qualities.. The French are therefore generally equipped to win in all foreign championships, which is not necessarily the case for the Spaniards or the Dutch, who are less physically comfortable.
“As soon as the Bosman judgment of 1995, which had allowed players to be exported, foreign countries had realized that the French benefited from quality training“recalls Loïc Ravenel, member of the International Center for Sports Studies (CIES).
Over the seasons, France has specialized in a recruitment model, trading, as in Lille and Monaco, which is recognized internationally.
Loïc Ravenel, researcher at CIESat franceinfo: sport
The principle: recruit early and bring young players to maturity to resell them abroad after one or two seasons. This is the pattern followed by the Principality club with Aurélien Tchouaméni, bought this summer by Real Madrid two years after his arrival from Bordeaux.
“As French clubs are seen as a kind of nursery with players to be valued, they are more and more often bought by foreign investors at the head of conglomerates”, underlines the researcher. Like Troyes, which joined the City Football Group in 2020, thus becoming a satellite club of Manchester City. The president of Clermont Foot, Ahmet Schaefer, also owns an Austrian club, and clearly displays this philosophy: “In terms of investments, it will always be more interesting to have a young player from his training center rather than going abroad to seek and pay a transfer fee.he confided in August 2021 to the Point. AC Milan was also bought on Wednesday by the American fund Redbird, which owns Toulouse FC. “With a French club in their group, they can take advantage of these networks and exchange players between partner clubs“, emphasizes Loïc Ravenel.
In addition, the French benefit from a very special confidence outside France thanks to the success of their elders. “For buying clubs, having had a positive experience with a French player can encourage them to take on new ones”, says Loïc Ravanel.
When Ousmane Dembélé, trained in Rennes, confirms his potential in Germany with Dortmund, he paves the way for other French people in the Bundesliga. Bayern Munich, which has no less than four French internationals in its squad (Kingsley Coman, Benjamin Pavard, Lucas Hernandez and Dayot Upamecano), recruited Stade Rennes winger Mathys Tel at the end of July, aged only 17 and ten. small matches played with the professionals. In the same way, Sevilla has been chaining promising tricolor defenders since the success Clément Lenglet in 2017-2018. The young Tanguy Kouassi has also replaced Jules Koundé, who left for Barcelona this summer.
In addition to the agents more or less introduced in certain clubs, which can therefore facilitate the transfer of players from the same environment, recruiters pay particular attention to the importance of the breeding ground represented by the Paris basin.
“Ile-de-France is the second largest reservoir of professional players in the world after the region of São Paulo in Brazil.”
Éric Roy, former player and ex-sporting director of Watfordat franceinfo: sport
“For fifteen years, the clubs have concentrated their efforts on this region of more than 10 million inhabitants. Many English, German, Spanish and Italian clubs have recruiters in Île-de-France”. The French tropism is therefore not ready to fall dry.