Russian football clubs spent over $114 million on player transfers last year, FIFA's press service has announced. FIFA said this figure is 383 percent higher than the amount spent during the previous year.
According to FIFA, in 2016 the total number of international transfers in football worldwide reached 14,591 trades, exceeding the previous year's total by 1,000.
Total spending on trading worldwide was $4.7 billion, 14.3 percent higher than 2015's figure.
The greatest activity came from Chinese clubs, which spent $451 million on new players. Since 2013, the volume of purchases by Chinese clubs increased 17 times.
European clubs spent $3.9 billion in total last year.
Among national football federations, the highest expenditure was recorded by English teams. Last year, English clubs bought players whose value totaled $1.3 billion, representing more than 43 percent of the total expenditure of the "Big Five" (England, Germany, Spain, Italy and France).
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