Korea to Face World's Most Expensive Football Team
chosun.com / Oct. 11, 2013 12:10 KST
Korea will face Brazil on Saturday night at Seoul World Cup Stadium. Brazil is the most expensive national team in the world in terms of the combined payroll of players, according to German website Transfermarkt.
It deemed the squad to be worth a total of 416.5 million euros, which is higher than Manchester United's 403 million euros.
Neymar, who joined Barcelona this season, has the highest market value among the star-studded Brazilian squad. Neymar is worth 50 million euros. Other stars in the team are also worth huge sums, such as Hulk (45 million euros), Lucas Moura (35 million euros) and Oscar (30 million euros).
However, the most valuable footballer in the global market is Argentina's Lionel Messi, who Transfermarkt evaluated to be worth 120 million euros.
As for Neymar, Barcelona paid 57 million euros to sign him from Santos, while according to some reports, four European clubs are ready to join Messi for 120 million euros.
Neymar's market value alone is almost equal to the combined market value of all 25 players in the Korean national squad. The latter was valued at 51.08 million euros.
However, the gap between world's best teams and the Korean national team has narrowed in recent years.
During the 2002 World Cup, the combined value of the 11 starting members of the Korean national squad was less than W10 billion (US$1=W1,074). In contrast, several Korean players in Europe can now contend for similar sums as Brazilian stars.
Son Heung-min of Leverkusen is rated to be worth 14 million euros, putting him on par with the 15th most valuable player in the current Brazilian national team.
The average market value of each player on the Brazilian team now stands at W27.5 billion, which is around nine times higher than the equivalent figure for the Korean team (W3 billion).
