Man United have made just £50m from selling home-grown talent in the last seven years while Chelsea have collected the most of any Premier League side… yet all English teams are MILLIONS behind top-of-the-table Benfica’s income of £316m
- Manchester United have made just £50m from home-grown talent since 2015
- Their most expensive departure was keeper Sam Johnstone for £6.5m in 2018
- Chelsea, Liverpool and Man City make up the top-3 of English clubs on the list
- Yet they’re still way behind Benfica, who made their biggest profit on Joao Felix
- The top-3 worldwide is completed by Real Madrid in 2nd and Monaco in 3rd
Manchester United have made just £50million from selling home-grown talent in the last seven years – putting them only eighth on the list of English clubs.
The 2018 transfer of goalkeeper Sam Johnstone, for £6.5m to West Brom, was their most expensive departure, according to a new study released by the CIES Football Observatory.
Chelsea have collected the most money out of Premier League sides – at £175m – while Portuguese giants Benfica are way out in front worldwide at £316m, with over one-third of that coming from the sale of Joao Felix to Atletico Madrid in 2019.
Manchester United have made just £50million from selling home-grown talent in the last seven years – their most expensive departure was Sam Johnstone to West Brom for £6.5m in 2018
Benfica are out in front at £316m, with over one-third of that coming from the sale of Joao Felix
The Portuguese side are famed for their pipeline of talent from the club’s academy, regularly selling their star assets for big money.
As well as Felix’s £113m departure, Ruben Dias and Renato Sanches are other home-grown players who’ve left for large sums in the past seven years.
Second on the list is Real Madrid with a total income since June 2015 of £275m, with Alvaro Morata’s second departure from the club in 2017 to Chelsea their highest sell-on at £60m.
Completing the top-three is Monaco, with the Ligue 1 club bringing in £238m. Over two-thirds of that was Kylian Mbappe leaving the club for PSG at a reported combined fee of £163m.
Second on the list is Real Madrid with Alvaro Morata (L) their highest sell-on, while Monaco are third on the list largely in part due to Kylian Mbappe’s (R) £163m departure
Then come Dutch giants Ajax, French side Lyon, Bundesliga club Bayer Leverkusen and Serie A team Atalanta before we get to the first English inclusion.
Chelsea are eighth overall with an income of £175m but have taken the most money of any Premier League side from home-grown talent, with last summer’s departure of Tammy Abraham to Roma for £34m their highest income.
Then comes Sporting Lisbon before Liverpool complete the top-10 with £142m, with Raheem Sterling’s £49m move to Manchester City in 2015 seeing Jurgen Klopp’s side sneak in.
Chelsea are eighth overall with an income of £175m with last summer’s departure of Tammy Abraham to Roma for £34m their highest income
Liverpool complete the top-10 with £142m, with Raheem Sterling’s £49m move to Manchester City in 2015 seeing Jurgen Klopp’s side sneak in
City themselves are £21m behind Liverpool at £121m, and are 17th on the overall list behind the likes of Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Anderlecht.
Kelechi Iheanacho saw the biggest income made, with a reported £25m fee after he left City for Leicester in 2017.
In the Premier League, Arsenal and Aston Villa are the only other teams who have made more than £100m on home-grown talent since 2015 – with the sales of Alex Iwobi and Jack Grealish respectively their highest – while Tottenham and Leicester City are also all above Man United, who are tenth in the country.
However, despite English clubs being low on the list individually, combined English clubs have generated the most money of academy graduates since July 2015, at a staggering £1.69bn.
Ligue 1 sides come in second at £1.34bn and Spanish clubs third at £1.160bn
The CIES Football Observatory is a research group created in 2005 within the Swiss-based Centre International d’Étude du Sport (CIES).
It specialises in the statistical analysis of football, in particular in the areas of demographics, transfer values and performance.
