Here’s how much money the Real Madrid youth team makes the club
With the windfall from Nico Paz and Víctor Muñoz, Madrid reaches over $550 in academy player sales since 2005.
Factories produce. And surpluses are sold, too. Real Madrid, by nature, is committed to remaining a giant with homegrown players in its squad, but those who do not fit into the first-team plans remain highly valuable assets. So much so that the club has already surpassed the remarkable figure of $585 million earned since 2005 from players developed at Valdebebas.
With the ink barely dry on Víctor Muñoz’s move to Liverpool, the $23.4 million the Catalan winger will leave in Real Madrid’s coffers, added to the $6.4 million Osasuna paid for him in 2025, pushed the total to $571.5 million. And with the $70.2 million Como will pay for 50% of Nico Paz’s rights, the figure rises to $641.7 million. But more money is expected. Much more.
As AS has reported, the sale of 50% of Víctor’s federative rights to Iraola’s Liverpool is only the tip of the iceberg. The objective has been clear for weeks in the club’s upper offices: to generate $70 million in sales from Real Madrid academy graduates. A target that, following Nico Paz’s move to Como, has already been comfortably exceeded. And the club remains active on multiple fronts.
The locomotive is being driven by the two first-team academy graduates most likely to need a new destination: Fran García and Gonzalo. At the same time, Madrid is monitoring what happens with Asencio now that Konaté’s arrival has been made official and Mourinho has requested another centre-back.
The other level is Castilla, the club’s great talent factory.
Last summer offered a useful preview of what could happen this time around. A total of $24.9 million was generated from seven Castilla players who left for destinations including LaLiga (Víctor Muñoz himself, Yusi and Álvaro Rodríguez), the Segunda División (Marvel), Italy (Jacobo Ramón), Germany (Chema Andrés) and Portugal (Obrador).
Now, three Castilla players are expected to leave soon: César Palacios, Fran González and Manuel Ángel, for whom Deportivo has shown strong interest. Their cycles with the reserve side have ended, but they are unlikely to be the last departures.
Víctor and Nico Paz enter Morata territory
To understand what receiving $29.8 million for Víctor Muñoz means, and the club does not even lose full control because Madrid retains a buy-back option, there is one telling statistic: in June alone, he generated more income than all of last summer’s academy graduates combined, despite having played only 47 minutes for the first team two seasons ago. It is a clear indication of how highly many Madrid academy players are valued outside Valdebebas.
The explosive winger has broken into the top 10 academy graduates who have generated the most money for Madrid. He sits seventh, overtaking the $29.3 million received from PSG for Jesé, in a ranking still led, and likely to remain so for some time, by Morata, whose sale to Chelsea in 2017 generated $93.6 million.
It should also be noted that, through his two other transfers, to Juventus and Atlético, Morata generated additional income via FIFA’s solidarity mechanism, adding a further $3.3 million.
Muñoz would have ranked sixth on the list, but Nico Paz has moved ahead of him. In fact, he has overtaken almost everyone else: with the $70.2 million from Como, added to the $7 million already paid for him in 2024, he has now contributed $77.2 million to Real Madrid’s coffers. And Madrid continues to monitor his progress: the club retains a buy-back option for the summer of 2027.
Madrid also believes there is no reason to think this gold mine will dry up any time soon. Other Castilla players, who will remain with the reserve side for now but already have significant interest from elsewhere, include Thiago Pitarch and Fortea. There is also the next generation coming through, led by the highly decorated Real Madrid Juvenil side that won this season’s UEFA Youth League.
Equally important are the deals involving players who have already left Madrid but in whom the club still retains 50% ownership: Arribas, Gila, Álvaro Rodríguez, Dotor and others. In all those cases, if a future transfer takes place, Madrid will receive half of the fee.
VIDEO | Víctor Muñoz explica en una entrevista a EFE cómo fue su rápido fichaje por el Liverpool, aunque incide en que ahora mismo solo le preocupa recuperarse de su lesión cuanto antes para poder ayudar a la selección española en este Mundial. pic.twitter.com/CiTmqVrPzi
— EFE Noticias (@EFEnoticias) June 25, 2026
| Player | Destination | Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Morata | Chelsea | $93M |
| Nico Paz | Como 1907 | $70.2M |
| Achraf Hakimi | Internazionale | $47M |
| Marcos Llorente | Atlético Madrid | $47M |
| Martin Ødegaard | Arsenal | $41M |
| Sergio Reguilón | Tottenham | $35 |
| Víctor Muñoz | Osasuna/Liverpool | $28M |
| Jesé Rodríguez | PSG | $29M |
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