As Manchester United bid farewell to Anthony Martial for the rest of the season, Newcastle struggle to sign their top target and Chelsea are left with Jules Kounde regrets, Sevilla’s transfer guru Monchi can rest easy knowing the fate of the transfer window rests in his hands once again.
All three Premier League clubs encountered a problem with those deals — and that was trying to convince Monchi, the brains behind Sevilla’s well-oiled operation, to compromise. When it comes to transfer deals, the Spaniard very rarely loses out.
Monchi — full name Ramon Rodriguez Verdejo — is renowned as one of football’s shrewdest operators in the transfer market as Sevilla’s sporting director.
Now 53, the Spaniard is credited with a knack for identifying talent with high resale value and extracting large transfer fees when those players have fulfilled their potential.
Martial’s deal to join the Spanish club may appear to be expensive on the face of it, with Sevilla reportedly covering the Frenchman’s wages until the end of the season. But as Real Madrid ’s only realistic title challenger, it could prove to be a masterstroke for Julen Lopetegui’s side.
Should the move fail to work out as planned, the 26-year-old will simply head back to Manchester United. It is understood Sevilla have not paid a loan fee, meaning Martial’s wages are merely a small price to pay if it means he contributes towards the club’s first-ever domestic title.
The club have also stood firm in their stance on selling Diego Carlos, the perennial centre-back key to their Europa League success in 2019-20, after the Brazilian emerged as a target for Newcastle United this month.
Knowing they were backed with the riches of the Saudi-based Public Investment Fund, Sevilla demanded his £45m asking price was met in full. The Magpies baulked at the costs involved and that was that.
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Similarly, Chelsea found their pursuit of Kounde last summer to be just as complex. Director Marina Granovskaia lodged a £50m bid, personal terms were agreed with Kounde until, at the 11th hour, the fee was changed to £60m.
Chelsea pulled out, despite having already sold Kurt Zouma to West Ham, leaving the 22-year-old defender furious. But he stayed at the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan, put his issues behind him and remains an important member of the squad.
With his resilient character and with a no-nonsense approach to transfer fees, The Blues could have been mistaken for believing Monchi was an alias for Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy. But this was on the tip of the iceberg for the Spanish bargain hunter.
Like many influential figures in football, Monchi’s talent on the pitch was somewhat limited. He spent 11 years with the La Liga outfit as a reserve goalkeeper before hanging up his gloves in 1999 and focusing on the business side of the game.
It could be argued his success in the role has given clubs the inspiration to imitate his model and find their own version to maximise the potential of the transfer market. Monchi’s dealings in January alone indicate that would be a smart move.
He also signed Porto’s Jesus ‘Tecacito’ Corona for just £3m, as well as swooping for Dortmund’s experienced midfielder Thomas Delaney for £5m and landed River Plate’s highly-rated full-back Gonzalo Montiel for £9m in the summer.
He is the man responsible for unearthing Dani Alves back in 2002. The right-back was on loan from Brazilian outfit Bahia and signed for just £420,000. Six years later, Barcelona paid £23m to sign him — and Alves went to become of one the Blaugrana’s most-decorated players.
Diego Capel, Alberto Moreno, Jesus Navas, Sergio Ramos and Jose Antonio Reyes all progressed from the youth team to the senior squad and were sold for seven-figure fees. Clement Lenglet, Vitolo, Carlos Bacca, Grzegorgz Krychowiak, Luis Muriel, Alvaro Negredo and Wissam Ben-Yedder were offloaded for fees above £20m.
The examples are endless, and it points to a working system that the club have in place. There is a general acceptance that player sales are crucial to fund the club’s long-term future, while spending should be kept to prudent levels to keep the club’s accounts in a healthy state.
A pattern of success of this kind would surely make Monchi a target for every top club in Europe, and at one point that may have proved the case. But the key to his strategy is his knowledge of the club and how his system fits the ideology of Sevilla.
Clubs have tried to poach him and it was AS Roma who were successful in doing so back in 2017, when they paid £5m to release him from his contract. He may have brokered deals to sell Mohamed Salah, Antonio Rudiger and Alisson Becker, but his signings failed to have an impact — and within two seasons, he was back in Seville.
Monchi has never shied away from handing credit to other sources, such as Sevilla’s entrusted scout system and the use of transfer data systems to evaluate potential signings.
"We compare the subjective point of view of our scouts with data's objective criteria," Monchi told BBC Sport.
"The fact they both almost always agree encourages us to make decisions. We trusted big data more this time because we have a more developed big data department.
"Although our platform is not 100 per cent complete, it has helped us much more when analysing interesting players."
The club won 11 trophies in his first spell at the club and have continued where he left off, with consecutive Champions League qualifications under Lopetegui and a Europa League title to add to their burgeoning collection.
Even if he is neither playing nor coaching, Monchi deserves a large share of the credit for helping transform Sevilla into one of the most attractive pools of talent in Europe.
Keeping players of Kounde and Carlos’ ilk will be crucial to continuing in that fashion, although there is a general consensus that Sevilla may need to sell one of the two not before too long.
But few would doubt his ability to find their successors for a small fee, whilst continuing to hold clubs such as Manchester United and Chelsea to ransom, for years to come.
