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Author of the goal that defeated Palmeiras and qualified Tigres for the final of the FIFA Club World Cup, André-Pierre Gignac has been with the Mexican national team since 2015 and is now the top scorer in its history, with 147 balls in the net.
The striker landed in America when he was 29 years old, after five seasons at Olympique de Marseille, and played two major competitions with the French team shirt: the 2010 World Cup and the 2016 European Championship.
His success at Tigres raised a question among the Palmeirense fans (and also among the fans of their national rivals): why does Mexican soccer attract players with Gignac’s profile, and Brazilian clubs, no?
The main reason is not economic, but cultural. The Mexican Championship is much more internationalized and open to athletes of the most varied nationalities than the Brazilian Serie A.
According to “Transfermarkt”, a website that specializes in covering the Mercado da Bola, a total of 39.7% of the athletes registered in the current Liga MX season are not Mexican. The rate of foreigners is similar to that of Spain (38.5%), one of the most important national championships in Europe.
This year alone, the elite of Mexican soccer has players of 20 different nationalities. The list includes several Argentines, Uruguayans and Colombians, but also Spaniards, a Dutch, a French and an Ivorian.
And this diversity is not new, it is already ingrained there. In the 1960s and 1970s, the country’s clubs invested heavily in foreign reinforcements. It is also not bad to say that this exchange was fundamental for the Mexican players themselves to develop technically in time.
In Brazil, the dynamics of soccer have traditionally been the opposite. Based on the belief of the “country of soccer”, national clubs have always invested more in local talent than in importing athletes.
Only recently, with the growing number of Brazilian players abroad and, consequently, with their price increase, the market became more open to foreigners. Even so, foreigners still do not represent 10% of all athletes in Serie A.
Furthermore, Brazilian soccer rarely strays from South America when it comes to signing foreign players. Names like the Japanese Keisuke Honda and the Ivorian Salomon Kalou, brought by Botafogo in 2020, are the exception to the exception.
In the logic that nourishes the administration of Brazilian clubs, reinforcing themselves with foreigners is a way to save, since they usually come from countries whose football has less money and, therefore, charge lower salaries.
In Mexico the opposite occurs. The highest paid athlete in the country is a gringo, precisely Gignac, who earns 4.6 million dollars a year. This is equivalent to about R $ 1.9 million per month (counting the thirteenth salary), a high amount, but not very different from the highest paid Brazilian athletes who play for flamenco, palm and athletic players.
In other words, for the clubs in the country, five times world champion, not hiring players of the French forward type is more an option than an economic limitation.
The 2020 Club World Cup is played in February 2021 due to the postponement of the international soccer calendar caused by the pandemic. Also due to the proliferation of the coronavirus, the competition has one less participant in this edition: the city of Auckland, New Zealand, decided not to travel to Qatar.
Tigres, the first Mexican team to reach the final of the competition, will play tomorrow (11) for the historic title, starting at 3:00 p.m. (Brasilia time), against Bayern Munich, current European champions, who are looking for the fourth world conquest. of its history (it won the Intercontinental Cup in 1976 and 2001, in addition to the 2013 FIFA tournament).
Also tomorrow, a little earlier, at 12 pm (Brasilia time), Palmeiras and Al-Ahly, from Egypt, return to the field for the “consolation prize” for third place.
