Liverpool have made the smartest moves in the transfer market when it comes to selling their young players, according to new research.
The Reds Academy has long been a conveyor belt of talent, first from Melwood and now with the young guns in the same place as the first team at the £50m AXA Training Centre in Kirkby.
Of course, not all players can make the breakthrough to the first team in the way that the likes of Trent Alexander-Arnold has, and for the machine to keep working well there has to be a clear pathway, one that either delivers for the club with the players being able to join the first team group or with them moving on to the financial benefit of the club.
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Selling their playing assets at a premium has for some time been something of a transfer trick at Liverpool. While there is the obvious cases of the likes of Philippe Coutinho's £142m move to Barcelona in January of 2018 as being evidence of that from a senior perspective, when it comes to younger players being moved on the club has achieved value in the market with the likes of Neco Williams (£17m to Nottingham Forest), Jordon Ibe (£15m to Bournemouth) and Harry Wilson (£12m to Fulham) among the players who had been through the U18s and U21s at Anfield and delivered financial value.
When it comes to selling at a high price and the value of those players subsequently falling, according to research presented by football business website Off The Pitch, it is Liverpool who have been the most savvy when it comes to that part of the transfer market.
According to the research the Reds have, over the last six seasons, got the best deals in the market when it comes to selling their U23 products..
Over the last six seasons the Reds have sold €51.2m (£45m) worth of U23 talent, with the value of those players sold in the market having fallen by €24.7m (£21.7m). That puts them best in class, above second placed Juventus, whose Next Gen programme sold more players and delivered €60.7m (£53.4m) in sales, although the subsequent fall in value was not as steep, with the total value fall since sale standing at €23.3m (£20.5m).
Liverpool's numbers were driven by the sale of the likes of Rhian Brewster, sold for £23.5m to Sheffield United in October 2020 but now worth a fraction of that with a market value pegged at around £4.5m. Other deals such as the exit of Ki-Jana Hoever to Wolverhampton Wanderers for £9m in 2020 but now worth around £3.5m. Rafa Camacho and Herbie Kane were other players to see their value fall post Liverpool exit.
It is the youth set ups at Liverpool and Juventus that are streets ahead of the rest of Europe when it comes to making smart moves with the sale of their young players. Inter Milan were third on the list while Napoli, Sporting CP, Atletico Madrid, FC Porto and Tottenham Hotspur all saw them sell players whose values subsequently fell.
Of the premature sellers, Manchester City were the biggest exporter of young talent financially, with €93.1m worth of young talent sold. The flip side of that figure is that the value of those players have since increased to the tune of €67.7m. That figure places them second on the list of those clubs who have not realised the true value of their players exiting the building, the team faring the worst being Arsenal, who delivered €14.5m from the transfer of their young players over the past six years, the value of those players having risen by €68m.
Chelsea, Ajax, Lyon, Borussia Dortmund, Barcelona and Real Madrid's academies all featured among the clubs deemed to have sold their assets early.
The analysis examined player sales from the youth/reserve teams of 26 major European football clubs over the past six seasons. The analysis disregarded free transfers as well as loans and only examined transfers that include a fee. Also, as some teams merge youth and reserve teams, no players over 23 were included.
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