RE: FC Porto: A Detailed Analysis of the Decline and the Way Forward
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I was thinking recently that one of the challenges for Portuguese football these days is that it can’t rely as heavily on transfer income from selling South American talent to other European leagues.
Portugal used to be the destination of choice for young South American footballers particularly Brazilians. Porto and the other big Portugese clubs often developed them and then sold them on for very healthy profits. Think of guys like Falcao, James Rodríguez, Anderson, Hulk, Danilo, Jackson and Alex Sandro, all amongst the most expensive transfers in world football at the time they left the club.
These days though you don’t see Portugese clubs being able to do as many of those deals. The Premier League in particular are happy to go direct to source and buy young South Americans, cutting out the middle man. That’s a significant revenue loss!
Even the fees you’re getting for guys like Luis Diaz (54mil Euro) are pretty low by comparison to what the club sold other Colombian talent for. James Rodríguez and Falcao’s fees in 2014 and 2012 would be the equivalent of 80 - 100 million Euros in the current market.
The very wealthy leagues like the EPL and Saudi Pro League are just bullying clubs like Porto into selling players at ok prices but not the kind of massive deals that were getting done
Yes, it is true that one of the great advantages that Portuguese clubs like Porto and even have it had was the fact that they could buy South American players at a low price and could yield them later as the case of Falcon, James Rodriguez, Anderson and others.
In the case of Porto in 2004 he was able to monetize several Portuguese players such as Ricardo Carvalho, Nuno Valente, Maniche among others because at the time these players were in lower expression clubs in Portugal.
I remember that at the time EPL and La Liga were more restricted to extra community players and giving the work visa this made these players have to enter Europe via Portugal that they had less restricted rules.
However, as now, EPL clubs and even La Liga will directly buy players from Brazil and very young with Stephen's case for Chelsea and Endrick for Real Madrid hired even before they are old enough to leave the country.
At this moment the Portuguese clubs have to reinvent themselves, in my opinion, with their formation as the case of Vitinha, João Neves, Nuno Mendes, Diogo Jota, etc.
!BBH