The Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club, from the English Premier League, paid $6 million for Moisés Caicedo at the beginning of 2021 to Independiente del Valle, a high amount for Ecuadorian soccer, as no one before his age (19 years old) had been sold for similar sums.
The transfer to Perugia in Italy in 1999 for Jaime Iván Kaviedes (43 years old) was also for a high sum, but Emelec executives did not specify values.
Both, born in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, represent the most expensive transfers in the history of football made from national clubs.
Each one completed their training in the country and made their debut in the national first division: according to records from the Ecuadorian Football Federation (FEF), Caicedo started at Espoli and went through Colorados SC before joining Independiente del Valle in October 2016, and Kaviedes made the leap from Emelec, where he also played in the under-20 squad.
Caicedo traveled to England to join the modest and centenary Brighton, from southern England, a team that fights to remain in the Premier League (currently seventeenth with 17 points). Kaviedes, on the other hand, left Emelec in January 1999 heading to Serie A in Italy, signed by Perugia, now forgotten in the third division of that country.
But the most important sale recorded in Ecuadorian football is the one made by Emelec to Santos Laguna in Mexico of the winger Ayrton Preciado in July 2018. The Mexican press then said that the Santos acquisition was around $8 million.
In the same line of sales in the era of the president of the blue team Nassib Neme, CSE received $5.5 million for Miler Bolaños (Gremio in Brazil), $4.8 million for Enner Valencia (Pachuca in Mexico), $3.6 million for Marlon De Jesús (Monterrey in Mexico), $4 million for Marcos Caicedo (León in Mexico), and $2.5 million for Ángel Mena (Cruz Azul in Mexico).
Talents transferred in Europe
Although Moisés Caicedo and Jaime Iván Kaviedes caused Europe to set its sights on Ecuadorian soccer to finalize their signings, there are important operations that Tricolor players have carried out in the transfer market in the Old Continent.
The most recent is the signing of Pervis Estupiñán with Villarreal CF, from LaLiga, on September 16, 2020, from Watford in the English second division.
The Spanish team did not specify the amount of the operation, but Watford detailed in a note back then that the transfer closed at around £15 million ($19.4 million), making Estupiñán the most expensive defender to join Villarreal CF.
But the highest figure for the transfer of an Ecuadorian footballer dates back to June 2009 when Manchester United signed Antonio Valencia. According to the British newspaper The Sun, United paid £16 million to Wigan Athletic for the Amazonian's transfer. A May 2009 report published in the Spanish newspaper As indicates that United paid €25 million (about $33 million) for the player.
There are other Ecuadorian internationals who remain active in Europe, such as the striker Felipe Caicedo at Lazio in Italy, the second top scorer of that team (with 6 goals) in the current league campaign.
The transfer of the Guayaquil-born Caicedo, from Lokomotiv Moscow, in 2014, cost $7 million euros (about $8.48 million) to Al-Jazira in the United Arab Emirates, according to Transfermarkt.
Enner Valencia also plays in Europe, registered with Fenerbahçe since August 2020. The former Emelec striker, in July 2014, was transferred from the Mexican Pachuca to West Ham United of the Premier League for a figure close to $25 million, according to reports from ESPN and the English media Daily Mail. (D)