OneFootball
·27. November 2025
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·27. November 2025
The CIES Football Observatory has published a report revealing which clubs are the smartest in the world when it comes to the transfer market since January 2021. This ranking focuses on the positive financial balance generated by the purchase and subsequent sale of professional players who have already been permanently transferred to other teams.

At the top of the list is Germany’s Eintracht Frankfurt, with an impressive positive balance of over 286 million euros. The German club generated 364 million euros in revenue from sales and had only 78 million euros in expenses on acquisitions related to those same players. This positions them as an efficient and profitable business model in Europe.
Eintracht is closely followed by England’s Brighton & Hove with a balance of over 221 million euros, and Germany’s VfB Stuttgart, which accumulated more than 178 million euros. The top 5 is completed by two clubs with a long history of success in talent management: Atalanta BC (Italy, over 150 million euros) and SL Benfica (Portugal, over 147 million euros).
Regarding LALIGA, the report identifies Girona FC as the club with the best trading balance since 2021, with a surplus of over 79 million euros. The Catalan team, which earned 115 million euros from sales, surpasses Real Betis (over 62 million euros) and UD Almería (over 55 million euros).

Atlético de Madrid and Villarreal CF also stand out in the Spanish table, with positive balances of over 54 million euros and over 44 million euros, respectively, highlighting the efficiency of several Spanish clubs in managing their player assets.
This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.
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