Giannis Constantelias’ progress seems to have slowed down a bit since his spectacular introduction to us a few months earlier, but it was enough to remind us that there are “diamonds” to hide in the team’s “pantries” before he finds them, crafts them, and displays them. her store.

The young PAOK ace surprised us with everything he showed us on the pitch as Razvan Lucescu began to trust him after his return from his (inconclusive) loan spell at Eupen. Timid at first and then more daring interest from foreign teams in his cause, we suspect that if he finds his rhythm again and returns to the standards of performance that he taught us so well, very soon there will be a big offer from abroad to raise him to higher level.

PAOK is the team that seems to have realized best in Greece how important a source of income a proper job in its academies can be, apart from of course strengthening the competitiveness of the first team with the kids coming out of its bowels. His youth teams are much better than their Super League 1 rivals, not only because he usually takes the youth leagues with ease, but mainly because he promotes their children to his professional team with much more frequency, consistency and trust.

Its profits are multiple, both competitively and financially. In this year’s league alone, quite a few kids from his academies got a lot of games under their feet, becoming key cogs in his engine, and not just to fill the roster. In addition to Constantelias, Coulierakis and Lyratsis have the starting position, Tsausis had it before he got injured, and 17-year-old Tsimas is slowly taking his turn.

For the meager facts of Greek reality, the cost of running PAOK academies is staggering because it reaches amounts that exceed the budget of even Super League 1 teams! Approximately 3 million euros that the “two-headed man from the north” spends annually on the development of the children of his academies (the cost of premises, technical staff, masseurs, doctors, missions, schools, payrolls, accommodation even for their families when they need to move from another city and etc.) many SL1 teams might envy, but in reality it is nothing more than a sound investment on a competitive and financial level as long as the job is done (what’s done) to a professional standard.

Just from selling the players who grew up in his academies, some of which went into the pocket, but in general offered a solid amount, PAOK has raised more than 30 million euros over the past 3-4 years, more than twice as much as everything it spends, having a lot of “yeast” ready to follow him. Tziolis brought 13 million euros to his treasury, Koulouris 3.5 million, Kutsias 2.5 million, Pelkas 2 million, Stafilidis 1.5 million, and the affairs of young people such as Botsis (K 17 Inter – 600 thousand), Dimitriou ( Basel – 500 thousand) and some others at this level, increase the score in the end. And if the case of Giannoulis enters the equation, who is not formally considered his “product”, even if in fact (he was acquired at the age of 18 instead of a lentil board from Vataniakos and developed through PAOK until he was sold for 7.5 million euros to Norwich), his profits are getting bigger.

If the right policies are put in place and the young people justify the hopes placed on them, it is expected that the turn of Constantelias and Coulierakis will soon come with amounts that could be eight figures, that is, more than 10 million euros each! And they are followed by other children who, with the right work and the right mindset, will at some point get their chance in a professional team, following in the same footsteps.

The truth is that Panathinaikos was the first to teach, especially with the famous generation of “gumobasinado” who were so much questioned (to the point of ridicule) even by his followers in the beginning, until they started writing History with the “greens”. “and the national team. The main difference is that Panathinaikos exploited these children mainly in competitions, and not financially.

Either because he didn’t have… the know-how, or because he didn’t have such a policy, or because the circumstances of the time were unfavorable, he actually only took money from Kyriakos and Seitaridis. The rest helped him build this great team on the fringes of the 2000s, but they weren’t sold to capitalize on their financial (and not just competitive) value.

It will seem strange to most fans, but on the list of teams that make huge profits from the sale of players from their Academies, there are several buyer clubs, that is, clubs that spend a lot of money on player transfers. players from other teams. They actually spend millions on foam from all corners of the football planet, but sell, very often quite quietly, players from their infrastructure departments for sums that don’t go down well, and ultimately earn a very impressive figure.

Could anyone ever expect, for example, that Chelsea would be very high on the relevant list, selling players from whose academies would bring in more than … 600 million euros into their treasury? Probably not, especially since in most cases these are players who have not even played in her first team! Five million euros for one to safely go to Brighton, for example, plus another 5-6 for another for Crystal Palace, etc. etc., the sum is staggering in the end, no one has even heard of it!

Manchester United are a classic example of an English team that spends a lot of money on transfers but cares a lot about their academies, with the trait that in 85 years there has always been at least one player who has moved up the divisions in his career. eleven its infrastructure. However, they are not very good at sales and their name is not in the top 10 teams that have collected the most money from their kids from the Academy.

The CIES Observatory has collected all the evidence and recently released a matching list with a few names that we all … suspected, as well as some others that we would never have thought of. In reverse order, according to players’ income from the sales of their infrastructure divisions, the top ten in the world are:

#10: Arsenal with €400m sales

No. 9: Flamengo – 438 million euros

No. 8. Santos – 445 million euros

No. 7. Sao Paulo – 475 million euros

No. 6. Paris Saint-Germain (!) – 490 million euros.

No. 5. Manchester City (!) – 510 million euros.

No. 4. Ajax – 555 million euros

No. 3. Barcelona – 580 million euros

No. 2 Chelsea (!) – 630 million euros

No. 1: Benfica – 670 million euros

The case of Benfica is not surprising, because for many years it was obvious that they had turned promotion into a science – the sale of talent, which they either brought out through their academies or bought very cheaply (compared to the amount she received later). ) at a very young age from other bands and effectively put them up for sale in her shop window.

Joao Felix is ​​a prime example of this. He was purchased in 2015 (almost for nothing) from the Academies of Porto, and four years later, when he was not yet 20 years old, he was sold to Atlético Madrid for 126 million euros! Even more impressive is the case of Enzo Fernandez. Benfica bought him from River Plate last July at the age of 21 for 10 million, and just six months later, in January last year, they sold him to Chelsea for… 121 million euros!

All this is on a different level than in Greek football and the numbers are certainly staggering. But they show a way, even on a smaller scale, for our teams to win the fight for survival. When they learn how to properly invest in their infrastructure departments and resist the xenomania of fans and the media, it will be time to get much more, both competitively and financially. Talent and raw materials exist, but they need vision, patience, investment and organization to break through the ceiling and change direction, moving into another, much better, era…