Promoting their own talents is now an important mainstay for all clubs in professional football. Of course, it’s about bringing the best players to your own team. But it is also an economic factor, because high profit margins can be achieved when selling talented players from your own offspring.
Even if some talents are now bought as young players and sometimes sums flow that make you shake your head, it remains a worthwhile business to train them further and one day sell them on. In some places entire football economies have developed on this basis. The sports researchers of the Center International d’Etude du Sport (CIES) have now examined which clubs have made the most money by selling talent from their own shed.
Benfica of Croesus
In the study period since July 2015, Champions League round of 16 Benfica is at the top. According to the study, the Portuguese earned 379 million euros in these six and a half years with players who were trained at their own club. The most expensive transfer during this period is Joao Felix, for whom Atletico Madrid paid over 125 million euros in 2019. Behind Benfica is Real Madrid, a club that you wouldn’t necessarily expect as a sales club.
Real follows Portuguese
In the case of the royals, however, it turns out that they have a very good academy, but only the absolute top players have the chance to assert themselves in the first team. A lot of talents can’t handle it, but find a good place in the squad elsewhere. 330 million euros have been collected in transfers for the Madrilenians. Behind them there is a gap to more classic sales clubs such as AS Monaco, Ajax or Olympique Lyon. With income of 213 million euros in the period under review, Bayer Leverkusen is the only Bundesliga club in the top 10.
Bayer04 ahead of Schalke, Dortmund and Bayern
At the Werkself, the sale of Kai Havertz to Chelsea alone accounts for 47 percent of all transfers for homegrown players. Only Kylian Mbappe for Monaco accounts for a higher proportion of the top 10 (63 percent). From a German perspective, Leverkusen are followed by FC Schalke 04 (EUR 136 million), Borussia Dortmund (EUR 81 million) and FC Bayern (EUR 73 million), which, however, only appear as a distant runner in an international comparison.
These clubs earned the most with homegrown talent
10. Liverpool, 171 million euros
9. Sporting, 209 million euros
8. Chelsea, 210 million euros
7. Atalanta, 211 million euros
6. Bayer Leverkusen, 213 million euros
5. Olympique Lyon, €270m
4. Ajax, 283 million euros
3. AS Monaco, 285 million euros
2. Real Madrid, 330 million euros
1. Benfica, 379 million euros
(Information via CIEStransfer fees for club-trained players since July 2015)
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