Exploring determinants of international transfers of women soccer players in Portuguese football

Abstract

In this pioneering work, we reflect on transfers in women's football. For this purpose, we collected all transfers from the two seasons with the most records in Portugal (the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 seasons). The four dimensions associated with individual and prestige characteristics conducive to changing clubs, as well as 14 variables, were tested. For treating the problem of the endogeneity of some variables, we used a probit model with instrumental variables. The results obtained showed that high values of “goals per match” increase the probability of a player having an international transfer. Other determinants, such as the position of the transferring club or the player's field position, are also discussed in detail.