What can you do with roughly $5 billion?
Buy Pinterest maybe? Build the world’s largest battery factory like Tesla? Or how about buying the entire World Cup squad?
With just a few days until kickoff in the world’s biggest soccer tournament, U.K. daily Metro last week calculated the combined transfer value of all of the 736 players travelling to Brazil to fight for the coveted trophy. The price tag? A whopping £3,126,400,000, or about $5.2 billion, based on the latest transfer prices. That’s about the same as Suriname’s gross domestic product or Apple’s loss of market value when the Beats deal first broke.
Host nation Brazil — maybe unsurprisingly — features the most expensive squad, with their players totaling a £407 million of transfer value, according to Metro. The figure was boosted by Paris Saint-Germain recently agreeing to pay £50 million for David Luiz, making him the most-expensive defender in the world.
Other costly players on the Brazilian team include Givanildo Vieira de Souza — AKA Hulk — worth £49 million, Thiago Silva, signed for £34 million, and Willian Borges da Silva, signed for £32 million. This exclusive and talented squad bodes well for Brazil’s winning chances in the tournament — Goldman Sachs has already forecast the host country as the victor and Deutsche Bank said this week it finds Brazil most likely to win the soccer championship.
And looking only at the finances, a Brazilian victory almost looks like a done deal. The second most expensive squad in the tournament is 23% cheaper than the total value of Brazil’s players, with Spain’s crew coming in at £315.2 million. Belgium is third. Its group of extremely talented, young players has been labelled the dark horse of the World Cup.
In fourth place is Portugal, with its net player worth boosted by one of the tournament’s most expensive players, Cristiano Ronaldo, who was bought by Real Madrid in 2009 for £80 million.
The U.S. doesn’t even make it into the top 10 and is, with a £26 million player value, ranked 26, surpassed by countries such as Ivory Coast, Bosnia, Greece and South Korea, according to Metro’s list.
The cheapest team in the World Cup? Iran, with player value of “only” £3.6 million.
For a full ranking, check out Metro’s calculations for all 32 countries in the World Cup. Time magazine also looked at the most valuable team in the contest, using current market values.