OpinionHow China is grabbing the world’s headlines for its ambitious football policy

China has once again been the world’s big spender in the January football transfer window, but suspicions remain that player salaries and values are being artificially inflated

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Odion Ighalo is the latest player to go to China for an eyebrow-raising fee. Photo: Reuters

Published: 3:30pm, 6 Feb 2017Updated: 3:30pm, 6 Feb 2017

A well-known figure in English football once commented that the sport is characterised by the ‘prune juice effect’. That is, whatever goes in one end, quickly goes out again at the other. The person in question, Alan Sugar, was specifically referring to the money generated by television contracts and how it gets spent on excessive player transfer fees and salaries.

The prune juice appears to have continued flowing during Europe’s recently-closed transfer window, England in particular recording its highest valued winter season (£215 million / HK$2 billion) for player sales since 2011. However, for many English football fans this January seemed underwhelming and, well, something of a non-event.

One reason for this may be that two players alone accounted for 37 per cent of total sales value. Brazilian Oscar left Chelsea for €60 million (HK$501 million), while Watford’s Nigerian player Odion Ighalo was transferred for £20 million (HK$193 million). Significantly, the destinations for both players were Chinese clubs: Shanghai SIPG (city population 14.4 million) and Changchun Yatai (city population 3.2 million) respectively.

While the Chinese Super League’s (CSL) clubs continued their player spending spree, the start of 2017 saw European clubs being rather more restrained in their transfer window acquisitions. Over the last 12 months, transfer values and player wages have rapidly inflated as a result of China’s avaricious pursuit of the world’s best footballing talent. January therefore seemed to be marked by European clubs stepping back from the inflationary spiral.

Observers have repeatedly warned that China’s football bubble will eventually burst, although recent interventions in football by the Chinese government have not brought any immediately radical changes in direction. Indeed, as Westerners have waited to hear the bubble pop, Ighalo’s transfer rather suggests it could still be inflating – one goal this season and none in the last 15 games from the forward hardly seems to warrant a £20 million transfer.