Napoli and Albiceleste striker Gonzalo Higuain left River Plate for Real Madrid at 18 years old

As an Argentine-American, I may sound biased when I say this; but, I consider it an indisputable face that when it comes to the world’s greatest footballing talents there is only one country — which shall remain nameless — that can rival Argentina in terms of production and exportation.

The presence of a number of Argentines on the world’s most successful teams reinforces this fact. For instance, Inter Milan, Champions League winners in 2010 and one of the top dogs in Italy despite recent struggles, have the largest contingent in Europe with 10 players, including captain Javier Zanetti and vice-captain Esteban Cambiasso.

Another historic team, Benfica, who lost three titles at the last gasp in 2012-13, boast six players, while rivals and Portuguese champions Porto have three in their first team. Other important Argentine players at title-winning or title-challengings clubs include Sergio Aguero and Pablo Zabaleta (Manchester City), Lionel Messi and Javier Mascherano (Barcelona), Carlos Tevez (Juventus), Angel di Maria (Real Madrid), Gonzalo Higuain (Napoli) and Javier Pastore and Ezequiel Lavezzi (PSG).

Three of the aforementioned — Messi, Tevez, and Aguero — rank within the top 15 best-paid players in the world. Two other attacking players, Dario Conca and Lucas Barrios, who are less well-known to those outside of Germany and Brazil, have also staked their place among the heavyweights of Argentine exportation by successively breaking Chinese transfer records with their arrivals back in 2011 and 2012, respectively. They were by far the most expensive and well-paid footballers in Asia (Barrios has since left for Spartak Moscow).

Although the majority of these talents have made their fame abroad, they all started in Argentine football and are the products of a transfer model that has sadly left every domestic club in the top flight drained of their prime assets. Simply imagine what the Copa Libertadores and Club World Cup would look like every year if national team players such as Higuain, (ex-River Plate), Messi (ex-Newells Old Boys), Aguero (ex-Independiente), Zabaleta (ex-San Lorenzo), and countless others were still plying their trade in their homeland — pretty frightening, right?

This “sell your best” model practiced by many Argentine clubs has been in place since the rise of European football in the eighties and nineties, and became even more widespread with the corporatization of the professional game, as wealthy owners in England, Spain, and Italy, became more willing to pay massive salaries to and transfer fees for desirable players. As a result, clubs struggling with  a mix of debts, poor ticket sales, and corruption in countries like Argentina and Brazil, have been able to capitalize on the trend and sell important players abroad to rake in enough money to keep themselves afloat.

In 2010, Argentina officially usurped Brazil as the world’s biggest exporters of soccer talent, having sold 1,800 players to their neighbor’s 1,400 during the 2009-10 season. The ratio has remained roughly the same in the proceeding years, with reports from the first part of 2013 showing Argentina exported $228 million worth of soccer players — more than the worth of their live animal exports.

This has left the domestic game suffering to the point that Argentina international and former Atletico Madrid captain Maxi Rodriguez, upon his return to hometown club Newells Old Boys in 2012, claimed “Argentine football is worse than it was 10 years ago”, in reference to the quality drain that has left teams looking like skeletons of their former selves.

This has especially proven true for Boca Juniors and River Plate, the two richest and most successful clubs in Argentine football. The former have won only two league titles and a domestic cup since 2008, while the latter (known as the “millionaires”), have one first division and one second division title in that time span, having suffered a historic relegation in 2011 that shook much of the football world.

Although River have gone to lengths to bring in popular players such as David Trezeguet, Fernando Cavenaghi, and Leonardo Ponzio (who is the only one still at the club at this moment) to improve the side during their period of struggle, they have also probably suffered more than Boca in terms of transfers to Europe. Over the last five years, among the promising local players sold abroad have been Lucas Ocampos, Diego Buonanotte, and Erik Lamela, in addition to foreigners developed by the club such as Alexis Sanchez and Radamel Falcao, who have gone onto major fame and fortune on the old continent.

Clubs are now competing with player agents who are trying to discover talent even younger, so that they can nurture them and get them on small contracts prior to selling them to Europe. For those who move abroad, the results are mixed, although clubs care little as long as they are getting paid for the transfers.

For every Aguero, who was sold for €20 million to Atletico Madrid in 2006 and has since become an emblem of the national team and one of the most recognizable players in world football, there are your Cristian Colussos, who left Argentina for Sevilla at the age of 19 and suffered severely in his short career due to agent-related fraud, lack of playing time, and pressured contract signings. His story cannot be uncommon with thousands of players leaving the country every season, most of whom remain unknown to your everyday soccer fan.

Even the two league winners from the 2012-13 season, Velez Sarsfield and Newells Old Boys, have seen themselves lose their key players over the summer. The former first sold top marksmen Facundo Fereyra to Shakhtar Donetsk in the Ukraine, then tried desperately to sell 21-year-old left-back Gino Peruzzi,  who looks set for €3.4 million transfer to Catania in Serie A. Newells, who lost coach Gerardo Martino to Barcelona after he decided to not renew his contract, also saw leading goalscorer Ignacio Scocco move to Internacional of Brazil after a season on loan with club.

Although clubs are a big factor, with their ridiculous corruption, powerful agents in Argentina and Brazil especially are the reason so many youngsters move abroad, after selling their brand to foreign clubs willing to pay out partial transfer fees to the player’s handler. This unfortunate reality was made famous in the media during the Carlos Tevez transfer saga that saw him leave Corinthians for West Ham United and then Manchester United, all the while causing issues because of his third-party ownership by Iranian businessman Kia Joorabchian.

There is no easy solution to this draining of talent in Argentine football, although the AFA and the government have made an effort recently to put a halt to it. This year the nation’s tax chief ordered greater transparency in professional football, requiring clubs to bank the cash made from player transfers in special bank accounts, for player contracts and profits to be recorded properly, and for player agents to be officially registered. These efforts seek to stomp out the hidden interests in the game and allow clubs to run more efficiently and young, promising players to be afforded greater protection.

But, who knows if anything will change? As soccer continues to grow in popularity in places like the United States, where there is still a good bit of ground to gain, and money continues to flow from wealthy owners, television deals, and merchandise sales, the demand for the type of players only South America can produce will remain massive. There could be shifts, as seen in Brazil where the league has exploded in popularity and despite it’s complicated structure has seen a number of very important players return home, including national team players Ronaldinho and Fred. However, that doesn’t remain likely in Argentina, where there is less money on offer and the hooliganism and corruption is more rampant.

It would be amazing to consider an alternate reality where the best players did remain in the country. The changes it could make in the top flight and the national team, which typically sees up to 90% of its players travel from Europe to train before international matches, could be drastic.

Youth scout Daniel Herrerra has some interesting things to say about the topic, and I leave you with a quote of his to consider. Critical of Argentina’s failures at recent World Cup tournaments, he declares confidently, “If all the Argentines and Brazilians playing in Europe were in leagues here, the World Cup every time would only be between Brazil and Argentina. This is guaranteed.”

It might be an exaggeration. But, with what Argentine players contribute to clubs all over the world, it might not be too far from the truth.