Salzburg among the most profitable junior academies in the world
The youth department of Red Bull Salzburg is one of the 20 academies that have earned the most from sales of self-trained players since 2015.
The Salzburg Youth League winners 2017 Patson Daka (right) and Alexander Schmidt.
GEPA images
Red Bull Salzburg is not only in the middle of the concert of the greats in the Champions League, the youth academy of the Austrian series champion has also long been one of the top addresses in international football. A recent publication by the International Center for Sport Studies (CIES) provides further proof of this. This has analyzed the most profitable youth academies worldwide, based on the transfer fees that the clubs have received from the transfer of homegrown players since the summer of 2015.
Salzburg is 18th in the ranking, just behind Manchester City and ahead of Arsenal. The Mozart city-dwellers have earned 140 million euros since 2015 through sales of players who have gone through their own offspring. The most expensive of these was Patson Daka, who joined Leicester City for €30m last summer.
Benfica Lisbon takes first place in this list with 379 million in revenue, followed at a respectful distance by Real Madrid, whose youth academy is not called “La Fábrica” for nothing, with 330 million. In third place is AS Monaco with 285m, mainly fueled by superstar Kylian Mbappé’s 180m sale to Paris Saint-Germain in 2018.