Alvaro Carreras: Why Real Madrid Paid €50 Million to Re-Sign a Player Who Left For Free | OneFootball

Five years later, Álvaro Carreras is back with Real Madrid.

The Spanish left back cost €50 million ($58.4 million) to sign from Benfica, the club he joined a permanent transfer just last summer from Manchester United. The Portuguese side had paid only €6 million ($7 million), agreed as part of loan from England.

During his time with Benfica, only 18 months in total, Carreras proved himself as one of Europe’s best emerging defensive talents, primed to patrol the left flank for Los Blancos for maybe a decade.

Carreras, who was formerly known as Álvaro Fernández until opting for his less common maternal name, is an ambitious individual and first left Real Madrid at the age of 17 because Manchester United presented him with something better. He’d joined three years earlier from Deportivo La Coruña, but wound up struggling in what was his third and final season in the Spanish capital.

The Athletic has reported that the coaching staff at Valdebebas didn’t view Carreras as the most promising left back at the club—that was considered David de la Vibora, who is now a student-athlete at Marshall University. It meant he was shunted into midfield and soon took the opportunity to head to Manchester for a “spectacular” contract, after also telling Real they didn’t believe in him.

With the benefit of hindsight, that has proven to be a €50 million mistake.

Although his chance in Manchester didn’t come either, much to the frustration of Carreras himself after accusing former boss Erik ten Hag of not trusting him—specifically his defensive abilities, evidence was there to see when he came up against Barcelona prodigy Lamine Yamal in the Champions League for Benfica last season and more than held his own.

That alone, might be worth making Carreras the second most expensive defender in Real Madrid history behind only Dean Huijsen (€57.7 million, $67 million), regardless of whether they let him go once before. If someone can contain Yamal, you’d better believe they are the real deal.

Carreras enjoyed a breakout season at Benfica. / IMAGO/ZUMA Press Wire

In reality, the Carreras we see now isn’t the Carreras that Los Blancos originally knew.

It may have been an oversight from Madrid staff to favor and prioritize someone else back then, but his experiences in Manchester and Lisbon have also been crucial to his development over the past five years. Without that, and the challenges that helped shape him as a person—such as adapting to life in new countries, new clubs and new styles—his trajectory could have been very different.

Above all, Real Madrid needed a left back. Ferland Mendy has proven too unreliable throughout his time in Spain due to injuries, with a limited Fran García and an ageing David Alaba the cover options last season—Alaba was badly exposed by Arsenal in the Champions League.

Carreras, who has been self-admittedly inspired by Madrid legends Roberto Carlos and Marcelo, was ultimately the best option on the market. The fact that he already knows the club could even play to his advantage because, as he said at his unveiling, it “means everything” to return. To discount someone as an option because a past mistake would be to do a disservice to everything Real is.

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