TThe 23-24 season has not yet finished, and Real Madrid has already made the big splash in the market for the next year. The arrival of Kylian Mbappé as a free agent, united with that of Endrickposition the current European champion in the pole position in order to revalidate the title in eleven months in Munich.
At this point, few can argue with the market strategy of the club he presides. Florentino Perez. Beyond the fact of snatching PSGa very powerful club from an economic point of view, which for many is the best footballer in the world, the truth is that the second stage of the leader at the head of the Bernabéu club stands out for a percentage of correct answers much higher than the average of what, in the end, are bets without unbreakable guarantees of success.
Since the sale of Cristianoin 2018, Madrid has moved wisely to rebuild a squad that has conquered of Champions and that has always been close to the final. Last season came Jude Bellinghamthe signing of the summer of 2023 although not the most expensive player (116 million euros it cost Arsenal Declan Rice), in 2022 Tchouaménianother blow on the Madrid table, and Rüdigerfree, and in 2021 Camavingaanother highly valued player, and Alaba after ending his contract with Bayern.
In fact, Madrid has only made the most expensive signing on the market once since the beginning of this prodigious decade. Was Balein 2013, by 101 million of euros. Not even Hazard (120) was at the top of his season (19-20), surpassed by Joao Felix (127).
With everything, It is in the balance between purchases and sales where Real Madrid truly marks the difference with its great competitors each season in the fight for the European Cup.. And, since the aforementioned 13-14, Ancelotti’s first season at the helm of the team in a campaign that ended with the winning of the Copa del Rey and the Champions League, the white club is only the tenth that spends the most, a total of 1,240 million euros, half that of the Chelsea (2,480 million) and less than City, United, PSG, Juventus, Barcelona, Asenal, Liverpool and Tottenham. The key is in the sales made by the white club, with Cristiano (117 million euros Juve paid in 2018) as the most expensive transfer. In terms of income, Madrid is also tenth, with 974 million, in a list that is also dominated by Chelsea (1.4 billion).
But it is in the final balance, the difference between purchases and sales, where Madrid stands out from its rivals. Although its balance is negative (260 million gap between expenses and income), the Bernabéu club is twentieth in the ranking of the main European clubs, a list that leads the United, with a negative balance of more than 1,300 million. Ahead of Madrid appear, apart from all the greats of the Old Continent, several Premier clubs, such as Newcastle, West Ham United, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, Fulham, Wolverhampton or Everton.
Madrid lives oblivious to that bubbleestablishing its own limits both in investments in transfers and in the famous salary scale that governs the economic hierarchies of the workforce. The iron health of the Madrid entity has allowed it, in addition to winning two European Cups after overcoming the effects of the pandemic (the club did not sign in the 20-21 season), rebuild your stadium to turn it into an additional source of income for decades to come. And, in addition, having the luxury of signing Mbappé ‘for free’, the second most expensive transfer in the history of football (PSG paid 180 million for him in 2018) after acquiring, in recent years, some of the most coveted players in a market that it dominates despite a fierce competition.
