How Benfica made over £1bn via youth development and sales?

The Portuguese clubs have been producing big talent and generating revenue by selling them.

Benfica have recently sold Enzo Fernandez to Chelsea worth 106m pounds, although he is not the only player from whom the Portuguese club has gained profit.

We have seen Benfica discover many young stars over the years and sell them to many elite European teams for a higher fee. It seems like their trophy case is overflowing despite their lack of cutlery in this Pedro Mil-Homens. The main goal of Mil-Homens, the director of Benfica's junior academy, is for the club to continue creating excellent young players, not to defeat other teams or win trophies.

Three players that have gone through those doors are on Benfica's roster this year: Goncalo Ramos, the team's leading scorer, scored a hat-trick for Portugal against Switzerland during the 2017 World Cup; Portugal's Antonio Silva and midfielder Florentino. In addition to helping Benfica advance to the quarterfinals of the Champions League and the league title, the trio has helped Benfica build a 2-0 lead over Club Bruges going into Tuesday's home leg of the last-16 round.

The Benfica academy is currently known as a factory that continuously churns out exceptional young players. With revenue of 379 million euros (£336 million) since 2015, the CIES Football Observatory named Benfica's academy the most lucrative in the world last year. With 330 million euros, Real Madrid came in second, and Monaco came in third with 285 million.

Joao Felix, who played in the first team for just one complete season, was sold by Benfica to Atletico Madrid in 2019 for a club-record £115 million. When they sold Ruben Dias, who had joined the team at the age of 13, to Manchester City a year later, they received £65 million.

Three more former Benfica players currently play for City alongside Dias: goalkeeper Ederson, Bernardo Silva, and Joao Cancelo, who in January signed a loan deal with Bayern Munich. Benfica's money-printing strategy, which has seen them produce an estimated £1.14 billion in transfer transactions over the past ten years, includes more than just homegrown players.

How they are able to promote young talents this fast?

Being able to fully engage young people in the club's mentality as soon as feasible is one of the main reasons Benfica's academy has been successful. 70% of the players the academy recruited last year were between the ages of six and twelve. In order to expand its development programme, Benfica created four additional academies across the nation in 2008. This allowed players to join the team without having to move their families to Lisbon.

It implies that Benfica competes with rival top-flight clubs Braga and Porto for the region's top young players. Silva and Ramos both came from talent academies located outside of the capital. The ability to hone talented youngsters in their youth teams in the difficult surroundings of the second division is a tool that Benfica and other great Portuguese teams have that Premier League clubs don't really have.

The B squad of Benfica allows young players to gain professional experience in the second league while remaining practising with the first team, unlike Premier League clubs that must loan out their young talent. It is typical for players to compete for such under-19 clubs in the junior league, the B team in the second league and the first team, fighting for the top-flight crown, all together in the same campaign.