Deconstruction of huge transfers: Portuguese Super League is the springboard of the Premier League, Serie A is the hero Chi Mu

Yesterday, in an article analyzing the legend and heritage of Portugal football, I talked about some topics of Grape youth training and Portugal's super black store. If I talk about the field of Portugal's super black store, I can't avoid the Premier League, which is deeply bound to it in the transfer.

From 2014 to 2020, Portugal encountered a large talent shortage. In that article, I mentioned a point: Benfica and Porto, known for their youth training, signed potential young players in South America at a bargain price, took a hot bath in the Portuguese Super League for two seasons, and then sold them to the Premier League team at a high price. This huge financial harvesting model squeezed the growth space of Portugal's local players.

Portugal Super League: The biggest springboard for Premier League players

If you look at the top 200 most expensive transfers in each season in the past ten years, from the 2,000 transfer data in the past ten years, there are 700 people who jumped from the Portuguese Super League to the Premier League to play football. In the past decade, the Portuguese super giant Porto has earned nearly 900 million euros. Nico Gonzalez, who spent €60 million in the winter window of last season, is now one of the most expensive players in Porto. Dias, who joined Liverpool for €54 million in 2021, is also quite expensive. These two players performed relatively well at Manchester City and Liverpool, and both can occupy the starting position in the team. Porto sold to Manchester City's Mangala at a high price of 45 million euros in 2014. When he joined the team, the price was only 6 million euros. However, during the five seasons he played at Manchester City, he had poor playing time and most of them were rented out. Another case similar to Mandela, Wolves spent 40 million euros to buy 18-year-old Fabio Silva from Porto in 2020. He has not played for Wolves in five years and has been rented out. Evan Nelson, who transferred to the Premier League mid-range team Bournemouth last year, also reached 37 million euros.

Compared with Porto's operations, another giant team in the Portuguese Super League, Benfica, is a big boss. In the summer of 2022, Enzo Fernandez joined Chelsea for 121 million euros. You should know that Enzo only stayed in Benfica for 6 months, and the value he bought from the riverbed was only 44 million euros. I made 80 million euros in 6 months, and this return on investment is a high yield in any industry. That summer, Benfica not only got wool from Chelsea, but also made a big profit from Liverpool: he sold it to Liverpool for 85 million euros, while the price he bought from Almeria was only 34 million euros. Rubendias, who transferred to Manchester City in 2021 for 71.6 million euros, Ederson, who transferred to Manchester City in 2017 for 40 million euros, Jimenes, who transferred to Wolves in 2019 for 38 million euros, and Lindelof, who transferred to Manchester United in 2017 for 35 million euros, have all achieved upgrades to fight monsters in the Premier League.

Another Portuguese Super League giant, Portugal Sports, is slightly different from Benfica and Porto's youth training policies. They are more willing to deepen their local players. Bruno Fernandez, who transferred to Manchester United for 65 million euros in 2019, is the highest value of a local player in Portugal Sports. The Portuguese young player Kunda, born in 2007, was booked in advance by Chelsea and traded in the summer window of 2026 with a transfer fee of 52 million euros. Now Manchester City's quasi-main player Matthew Snunes will transfer to Wolves from Portugal Sports for 47 million euros in 2022.

If you look further, Nani, who joined Manchester United for 25 million euros in 2007, and Ronaldo, who joined Manchester United for 19 million euros in 2003, are all local players from Portugal. Portuguese Sports has its own unique side in youth training, which is why Portuguese Sports can continue to provide talents to the Portuguese national team for so many years. What had a profound impact on Portugal Sports' youth training was Ronaldo's huge success in transferring to the Premier League.

Serie A: The retirement distribution center for big-name players

Unlike the Portuguese Super League as a springboard for the Premier League, the Serie A has transformed into a retirement distribution center for players in the past decade. In the just-concluded Serie A championship competition for the 24-25 season, Inter Milan has four core players over 31 years old, while Naples has 11 players over 28 years old. The core reason for this situation is the business model of purchasing players in Serie A. They prefer to buy players who have already verified their strength in the five major leagues for several seasons. For example, De Bruyne, who left Manchester City freely this summer, after solving the portrait rights issue, De Bruyne's next destination is Naples. In 2019, Lukaku transferred from Manchester United to Inter Milan for €74 million and again from Chelsea to Naples for €40 million in 2024.

In the article the day before yesterday, I mentioned that the Serie A team Inter Milan was beaten 5:0 by Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final, and mentioned that the Italian national team won 3 goals in the first game of the 2026 US-Canada-Mexico World Cup European qualifiers by Norway in just 42 minutes. In Italian politics, a senior Senate official also expressed his questions on social platforms: "There are always many foreigners in Italian clubs, so the quality of the results is related to these people."

Serie A clubs buyers' strategy determines that they have no soil for the club's continued competitiveness. When players who play for the year can ensure the league's attendance rate, their experience, strategies and abilities can quickly fill the club's position shortcomings, but the stable playing time of these players squeezes the living space of Italian local players, and often in three seasons or even less, these players almost enter the end of their careers.. In this cycle, to ensure the team's performance, some young players who have not been trained in the competition cannot count on it, and those young players with great potential and ability are not attractive enough, so the obvious vicious circle is to invest money to buy older players to supplement the lineup.

The transfer strategy of huge investments has become increasingly attractive in attracting young players and potential players. After Abraham withdrew, Chelsea, which was taken over by the US consortium, has also been learning from the practices of Portuguese giant teams in the past two seasons, buying players of lower age groups and signing longer contracts. Unlike the huge vitality of the Premier League, Serie A has been significantly dragged down in the operation of its transfer strategy.