Emilio García Silvero claims FIFA financial packages strengthened football despite pandemic
FIFA’s chief legal & compliance officer Emilio García Silvero has claimed that, despite the disruption to football around the world caused by the global pandemic, financial support packages provide by FIFA have made the game stronger.
In his foreword to FIFA’s newly published ‘Global Transfer Report 2021’, García Silvero said: “In 2021, for the second consecutive year, the COVID-19 pandemic caused considerable difficulties in competitions right across the globe.
“Football’s dynamic growth in the years prior to the outbreak of the pandemic was not completely disrupted, however. Last year, 4,544 clubs (the highest-ever number and almost 400 more than in 2019) completed a total of 18,068 international transfers in men’s professional football, just a few transfers short of the all-time high of 18,080 recorded in 2019.”
García Silvero added that FIFA’s “carefully planned assistance for member associations, clubs and players – such as financial support packages and amendments to various sets of regulations” had helped the game to grow stronger, even in a very difficult period.
García Silvero also said the increase in the number of clubs involved in international transfers was not limited to the men’s professional game and that developments in women’s professional football and in amateur football “clearly show that President Gianni Infantino’s vision to make football truly global is well on track”.
The report said the number of international transfers of professional players in the women’s game has almost doubled in the four years since their introduction to the FIFA Transfer Matching System in 2018, whilst the number of clubs involved in these transfers had also risen, from 220 in 2018 to 414 in 2021.
To read the report in full, click here