It is no surprise prodigal England leads the extravagant pack. The lucrative (and absurd) television deals have bloated the coffers of EPL clubs and instilled an obsessive impulse to spend, no matter the plight of the hard-working exploited fan.

The latest tranche of EPL live domestic television rights for the next two seasons are about to go under the hammer, with a likely few hundred million more than the US$4.54 billion achieved in the last auction flowing into the clubs' tills.

"From a spending perspective the English market is dominating," said Mark Goddard of Fifa's transfer unit. No kidding.

Fifa's technology system helps it gauge the size of the global football transfer industry and, it says, how best to manage it, making it "more transparent and legally compliant".

Both clubs involved in the buying or selling of a player must enter the relevant deal information into Fifa's online system for an international transfer to be validated.

This processing, says Fifa, speeds up transactions and reduces transfer delays, resulting in "associated cost savings" estimated at up to US$8 million a year.

It also claims to provide protection against the use of fake documents, and is designed to help safeguard the protection of players under 18.

Overall, there were 13,090 international transfers worldwide last year (the figures do not include domestic club-to-club moves), with Brazil - again - the most active nation with 1,335 transfers, both incoming and outgoing.

England was the second most active nation and Portugal the third.

European countries accounted for 87 per cent of worldwide spending, with international transfers between European nations representing three-quarters of all spending - not bad for a continent otherwise on its knees.

Spain was the biggest receiver of transfer money, banking US$667 million.

India hired the oldest players, at 28 years and 10 months on average, and China entered the top 10 biggest spenders globally, forking out more than US$100 million on foreign talent.

You would like to think that we in England with EPL season tickets and live television offerings are getting the biggest bang from the big bucks.

The EPL, after all, boasts the largest collection of stars playing the most frantic, exciting football on the planet, as recent FA and League cup shocks proved.

And the glitz and the camera angles and wall-to-wall coverage obviously do not come cheap.

But in an era where we are all forced to tighten our belts, much of the data - the unfathomable cash sums and general unashamed largesse - makes you wince and cause you to ask: what defines modern football, the money or the game?

What really sticks in the craw was the US$236 million paid last year to what Fifa calls "intermediaries", better known as agents.

English clubs accounted for more than one-third of this total, handing over US$87 million to the weasel middlemen.

An investigation by a British newspaper this month detailed the growing underclass of young international footballers eking out a living across Europe as they try to get a break within one of the continent's leagues.

Unscrupulous agents entice these youngsters on false premises from west Africa, South America and Asia, claiming they have trials with top European clubs lined up.

These rogue agents are fully aware many of the boys do not have what it takes to succeed, while the naturally talented are preyed upon by the Svengali-types who falsely claim they have high-level contacts but who have no intention of fulfilling their end of the deal once in Europe.

In what has been described as football's version of human trafficking, many young hopes - stripped of their cash - are abandoned soon after arrival without a job or any formal documentation.

In one harrowing case, a stricken trawler washed up in Tenerife with 130 dehydrated souls on board, including 15 footballers who were duped into thinking they were en route to trials at Marseilles or Real Madrid.

This darker part of the lucrative global transfer market has yet to be recorded on Fifa's state-of-the-art player validation system.