There is no doubt that Brazil is one of the great quarries in the entire world. Throughout the history of football, there has almost always been a Brazilian in some of the most successful squads in the world and the vast majority have arrived from some of the clubs with some of the best youth teams. But in some cases, these sales to European football have not been from homegrown players, but from footballers bought from other clubs and sold for excellent profits.
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Athletico Paranaense is the club with the most economic benefits in South America due to sales of non-homegrown players
According to data from the CIES Football Observatory, in this area there is a Brazilian club that has managed to stand out from the rest, being the team in all of South America with the most profits from sales of footballers not trained in its youth academy: Athletico Paranaense.
All this, according to the data analyzed by the aforementioned entity, which analyzed the figures of all the clubs in the world between 2014 and 2023.
In this list, LOSC Lille is the club in the world with the most profits from this type of sales, having a profit of +368 million euros after having spent close to €241 million on signings that were sold for more than €627 million.
The top 3 is completed by AFC Ajax (+€317 M) and RB Salzburg (+€233 M).
In this list, in which there is no other South American team, Athletico Paranaense appears in thirteenth position. The Paraná-based team spent close to 16 million on signings, generating an impressive net profit of +€123 million, earning 139 million in total.
Which discarded footballers did Athletico Paranaense sell in this period?
According to data from TransferMarkt, these are some of the footballers who were not trained in the Athletico Paranaense quarry who were sold for more money between 2014 and 2023:
· Vitor Roque (Trained in Cruzeiro) → FC Barcelona (40.00 million euros)*
· Bruno Guimarães (Trained at GO Audax) → Olympique Lyon (20.00 million euros)
· Robson Bambu (Trained in Santos) → Nice (8.00 million euros)
· Fernandinho (Trained in Paraná STC) → Shakhtar (7.80 million euros)
· Abner Vinicius (Trained in Cruzeiro) → Real Betis (7.00 million euros)
*Despite having played for Athletico Paranaense since he was a youth, Vitor Roque was trained in the América-MG and Cruzeiro youth squad.
