The situation
The trade began with bartering and developed until our era advancing with respect to technologies, forming a complicated network of the market where you can buy from a simple piece of fruit to a drawing that only exists on the internet. The market extends its tentacles also in football and more in these last two decades. The transfer period has become a market with its own rules set by FIFA , but whose prices have been set by clubs, agents and players in an upward trend setting transfer records year after year. Although the buying clubs are almost always the same, with the top 30 most expensive transfers divided between just eleven clubs (PSG, Barcelona, M.City, Real Madrid, Juventus, At. Madrid, Chelsea, M.United, Liverpool, Bayern and Arsenal), the vendors are much more diverse. In recent times, several clubs have made the recruitment, development and subsequent sale of players their ‘modus vivendi’. Capture talents to develop, form a competitive block, try to win all the possible titles with those players standing out and have twenty giants knock on their doors to ask for a price to take their stars. Porto with James Rodríguez, Falcao or Luis Díaz as the last case is one of the most outstanding in this task, as is Borussia Dortmund, whose list is enormous and goes from Sahin to Haaland passing through Lewandowski, Götze, Aubameyang or Mkhitaryan. Although other clubs have more history or fame in this business plan, it is Dmitri Rybolovlev’s Monaco that has achieved a historic milestone in the transfer market by closing a second sale of one of his players for 100 million euros or more after the signing of Aurelien Tchouameni by Real Madrid for 80 million euros plus 20 in variables.
The details
The Russian’s project began with hints of a foreign-owned club with a fortune behind it to try to take on PSG with their same method of signing stars and forming a notable bloc. The expenses changed the project that featured Radamel Falcao as the first big star. The sale of James Rodríguez to Real Madrid served to reinforce a historic Monaco that reached the last rounds of the Champions League with Mbappe, Lemar, Fabinho or Bernardo Silva as stars. Today, none of them wore the shirt of the Principality club anymore and they all went out to the European giants.