SÃO PAULO, Brazil — In this country’s top soccer league, the Brasileirão, team officials are used to the phone calls. They expect them. Agents and executives, middlemen and managers, all of them looking to make a deal in the game’s greatest shopping mall.
But where once the interest regularly came from Madrid or Milan, these days the voice on the other end of the line, teams say, is more likely to be calling from Beijing or Shanghai. And increasingly, the Chinese suitors are looking to buy only the best.
Last year, teams from China’s Super League bought the rights to perhaps the Brasileirão’s two best players.