Benfica's Seixal Academy: a money-making machine or something more?

Benfica's Seixal Academy: a money-making machine or something more?

League leaders or not, it remains a contentious point that much of Benfica’s talent has found its way out of the club. While there was a resignation amongst Benfiquistas that the team’s stars could not shine much longer exclusively in Benfica red, the extent of the departures has been distressing for many.

Granted, the concerns with financial matters did appear to force the hand of the club into a selling spree, and just the sales alone of Andre Gomes, Rodrigo, Markovic, Garay, Cardozo, Oblak and Enzo brought in over €100m to help the balance sheet.

Where the club is starting to get some criticism is regarding their handling of Portuguese talent, particularly that produced by their academy.

The Seixal project appears to have experienced a resurgence of late, giving many the hope that Benfica could start genuinely leveraging their own home-grown talent for the good of both club and eventually, country.

Many of the young hopefuls have found themselves being loaned out to other clubs in the Liga or in Europe. Some of this makes sense for the development of the players. They have the benefit of consistent football playing for these other sides. After all, Benfica may have these players available, but they also have the pressure to win titles, and that pressure can be an arduous climate in which to foster young talent, as difficult as that may be to accept.

And then Bernardo Silva was sold to AS Monaco for €15.75m.

It’s fair to say this decision didn’t land favourably. After all, he represented more than just a special young player. He was regarded as the most exquisite talent since a certain Rui Costa emerged with promise from the academy.

Actions speak louder than words, though. And they have sent chills down the spine of the Seixal Academy and the young assets it produces. It’s understandable that there will always be talent that doesn’t make the grade for the purposes of the first team’s success. And of course, you’ll seldom see fans lament the departures of players who didn’t show any potential or promise to develop into something special.

But the case of Bernardo Silva raises a few potent questions.

Buying Low and Selling High

There are a number of arguments for aggressively sustaining the talent that a good academy produces. If these players prove to be of the right quality, they represent highly cost effective recruitment. A club isn’t paying transfer fees to bring these players in. If those players land in the first team and produce superlative performances, they’re in a position to contribute to the success of the team in a far less expensive manner than riding the transfer market.

There’s a sentimental aspect as well, of course. What local fans don’t enjoy the idea of a local kid developing into a home-grown footballing hero?

But the challenge faced by top Portuguese clubs is not sentiment. It’s competitiveness in Europe.

Consider for example, some of the graduates from the best academy in Portugal in recent memory. In no particular order - Ronaldo, Figo, Nani, Simão, Moutinho, Quaresma. Four of them left Sporting in big money moves very early in their careers. Ronaldo managed the least appearances of them all, with only 25 games for the Lions. He signed for Manchester United for £12m, a near mockery given his subsequent move for £80m to Real Madrid.

Sporting may have retained Moutinho and Figo for over 100 appearances before their departures, but that remains the exception and not the norm.

If one has to pose the question to Sporting as to why they were sold – much of it relates to finances, and over €50m was earned by the sale of Ronaldo, Nani, Quaresma and Simão.

The finances are – unfortunately – a very relevant dynamic in these situations. Consider the example of Porto, as explained by the excellent Swiss Ramble ("Porto Buy Low, Sell High"). Porto have comfortably been Portugal’s most successful club in way of trophies over the last two decades. Yet the reality is that player sales have been important in allowing the club to ensure it makes a profit, let alone create and accumulate wealth to grow its operations.

The issue of finances relates very simply to competitiveness. Both in the Liga and especially in Europe, it’s very clear that a certain amount of financial muscle is needed to sustain a competitive profile in these competitions, to achieve access to the lucrative cash injections from progress in the Champions League and to a lesser extent, the Europa League.

Show Me the Money

Which brings us to Benfica.

According to the latest Deloitte Money League report (Deloitte Money League 2015), Benfica are ranked 26th in the top 30 richest football clubs in world football. The context of this is mind-blowing – Benfica’s turnover of €126m in season 2013/14 is lower than (for example) English club Aston Villa (€133m). In fact, of the 25 teams above Benfica in the ranking, five of them did not play in any European competition.

These clubs don’t typically have strategies and track records of selling their players in the manner that Benfica does. In the last six years, this strategy is clear as Benfica has brought in 9 of their 10 highest ever record player sales.

The merit to this argument is obvious – ever since Benfica have started to match Porto’s approach from a transfer perspective, the team has improved, ironically. They may have underperformed in the Champions League, but two Liga titles (and a decent chance of a 3rd), consistent Champions League qualification, two Europa League finals, and other domestic trophies certainly pose a dossier of success using this method.

The irony is that this approach isn’t just limited to teams of smaller financial scale. If it wasn’t for the sales of Kevin De Bruyne, Juan Mata and David Luiz (ironically formerly of Benfica), English club Chelsea wouldn’t have made only their 2nd profit of the Roman Abramovich reign ("Chelsea Hey Hey My My Into Black").

It’s with these considerations that one should look at Benfica’s possible future use of Seixal. The questions are dripped in emotion and the legacy of the club, but there is little doubt that if the academy begins to produce lucrative talent that has marketability, the option exists to allow this talent to develop further, via loans to other clubs or within Benfica for eventual sale once these players have developed a solid transfer value.

In a cold calculating sense, this strategy has merit. It opens up an additional stream of strong revenues, which not only assist with larger issues like compliance to FFP, but also provide additional wealth for reinvestment. It’s unclear how much debt the club still has to service, but these funds assist in those respects as well.

However – Benfica are a club with a certain reputation and expectation. Selling failed academy talents is not the same as selling a young prodigy who was threatening to deserve the label of being the next Rui Costa. The outpouring of emotion regarding the sale of Bernardo Silva isn’t just about the way the transfer was conducted.

It’s about the fact that for once in a long time, Benfica were on the cusp of a potential world class Portuguese talent, hoping and dreaming to play for his chosen club. To decide that this isn’t enough to resist the lure of large sums of money from other interested clubs is a very worrying precedent to set. It’s one thing to sell talent that won’t make it – it’s another to part with a young player who could make a very special contribution.

Time will tell what the planned approach is with the talent coming out of Seixal. But in the meantime, for all the success Benfica may be enjoying on the pitch, in the near future at least, it remains to be seen if their promising youngsters can share in it.

by Marco Lopes (for more from Marco follow him on Twitter @Footy_MarcoL)