Can Real Madrid solve the Kylian Mbappe problem?

Our focus here at The Transfer Flow is mainly on the Premier League, with a sprinkling of the Champions League giants for good fun and spice. Given it’s an international break, we figured this week might be a good one to cast our eyes wider in the world and review transfers from bigger teams around Europe.

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Now, on with the show!

Real Madrid — We knew it was coming, but it still rocks

Total incomings — €211.5m

• Kylian Mbappe — “Free” (€150m signing on fee)

• Endrick — €35m + €25m add-ons

• Joselu (flipped) — €1.5m

Mbappe’s move is a classic case of “free isn’t really free” — PSG did not earn a transfer fee for the move, but Real Madrid paid a monstrous signing bonus the size of his real transfer fee directly to Mbappe.

Pre-pandemic, I thought we might see a lot of these types of deals as players began to take risks by running out their contracts so they could keep the transfer fees exchanged between teams for themselves. Then the world stopped, and everyone backed away from risk. Now we have the world’s best player kicking things off again, and Real Madrid is clearly pushing various players to do the same (Alphonso Davies, Trent Alexander-Arnold), so maybe it’s happening?

Whether Real Madrid actually needed Mbappe is an irrelevant question. Any time you can actually sign one of the world’s best in their prime and not break your entire financial structure, you absolutely should do it. No sarcasm here, just make it so.

Speaking of… if there is any team in the world that has earned the right to spunk down mid-8 figures for Brazilian teenagers, it’s Real Madrid. Following the tradition of Vinicius Jr and Rodrygo, they spent similar money to sign Endrick, a boy who had been seeing playing time on the pitch in Brazil’s Serie A since he was 16. And unusually… I can kind of get behind this one.

When you put in these kinds of performances against real men at age 17, you might just be the next huge star in world football. —TK

Ravi mentioned a couple weeks ago on the podcast that Endrick’s arrival and good performances are complicating the Vini-Mbappe problem even further. One of Mbappe or Vini is going to need to move to the right and learn to like it sooner rather than later, because Endrick is already the team’s best center forward. Again, this is the most luxury problem to have, but it is still a problem. —KM

Ted: A+ | Ravi: A | Kim: A

Total outgoings — €1.5m

• Joselu — €1.5m (presumably plus add-ons?)

• Nacho — Free

• Toni Kroos — Free

I’m guessing there’s something missing in the reporting on Joselu’s transfer. If Real Madrid had a deal for the exact same price as their purchase option, I’m not sure what the point is of executing the option? So I am just assuming some unreported performance-based add-ons exist here.

There are no extra senior players hanging around, so we’re not going to grade Madrid for a lack of sales. —KM

Ted: N/A | Ravi: N/A | Kim: N/A

This is going to be a weird season for Real Madrid. They won the league and the Champions League last season, but their xG difference in the league was basically the same as Barcelona’s, and everyone is aware of how dysfunctional they have been. We’ve seen from early games that Carlo is still trying to figure out where to play his surfeit of gifts to get the most out of them. They still have one of the best, most versatile midfields in football, even if pass model king Toni Kroos has sailed off into the sunset. On the other hand, the fullbacks are a little old, and the depth off the bench might be slightly weak by their own high standards.

The bigger problem is Barcelona have been rampant in the league so far, even with a squad that seems 80% straight out of La Masia. Real Madrid have the best squad, but can Don Carlo keep a team that occasionally operates on vibes-only focused on an entire league campaign with a real challenger? —TK

Overall grade: A

Atlético Madrid — Huge overhaul

Total incomings — €201.5m

• Julián Álvarez — €75m + €20m add-ons

• Conor Gallagher — €40m

• Robin Le Normand — €34.5m

• Alexander Sørloth — €32m

• Clement Lenglet — Loan

• Juan Musso — Loan

Across town, Diego Simeone had a very busy summer. By their own standards, Atléti spent big and peaked up two peak age players, and two with a bit more age on them, all in positions of need.

Let’s start with a fact: Atléti were old last season. Like 29.6 years old in weighted minutes across all time played in the league. Spain might be a little more gentle in the age curve than the Premier League, but that’s not a place you want to hang out as a team expected to perform in all competitions.

How about another one: For the past two seasons, their defense was leaky. For nearly a decade, Simeone’s teams had a remarkable consistency. They would concede about .75 expected goals, generate 1.2-1.4 xG in attack, and finish 1st to 3rd in the table. The last two years have seen that defensive number creep up to 1, and saw them finishing fourth in the table, just behind well-funded upstarts Girona.

Changes were required.

We like the Gallagher deal and think they got great value for a very necessary pitbull in midfield. Chelsea’s loss, Simeone’s gain. Álvarez was a small overpay, but his flexibility and skills across the frontline bring freshness that has been lacking.

Sørloth should have won the pichichi last season (in modern football, penalties obviously should not count, but Spain can’t even get their matches scheduled two weeks ahead of time, so tilting at windmills, etc), and provided he’s healthy, this is a reasonable pickup. He’s been a physical mismatch for defenders his entire career, and is pretty good at creating for teammates even when he is not scoring. —TK

I don’t have a problem with any of these signings. But the price on Le Normand feels inflated by Euros success, and Álvarez carries some pretty significant risk. Very minor criticism, just enough to bump them down from glowing praise. This was good. —KM

Ted: A- | Ravi: A | Kim: B+

Total outgoings — €95m

• João Félix — €50m + €5m add-ons

• Samu Omorodion — €15m

• Alvaro Morata — €13m

• Çağlar Söyüncü — €8.5m + €1.5m add-ons

• Santiago Mourino — €2m

• Vitolo — Free

• Gabriel Paulista — Free

• Memphis Depay — Free

• Mario Hermoso — Free

• Stefan Savić — Free

• 5 senior players loaned (including Saul)

Atléti needed to clean house and rebuild and they did that. Félix’s initial fee was absurd, but the fee they got for his performances over the last couple of seasons was actually pretty good. Morata was a fine soldier who was happy to move on to Milan on a long-ish deal. The fee there is fine. The one no one is quite sure about is Omorodion. Age versus performance at Alaves was very good — in the summer of endless young player buys, why didn’t he go somewhere bigger and for more? —TK

Shoutout to Porto for exploiting Atléti’s need to get Samu out the door for any kind of fee. While Atléti retained a huge sell-on that will likely net them another 8 figures sometime in the future, that won’t happen until after he scores a bunch of goals in Portugal (and then nets Porto a decent profit as well).

Getting this much money back for Félix is absurd. Forcing Chelsea to pay it in order to sign Conor Gallagher while still getting him at fair market rate, not even an inflated PSR swap fee, is even more absurd. —KM

Ted: B+ | Ravi: B+ | Kim: A

For the first time in ages, Atléti’s attackers look dangerous enough to cause problems everywhere for opponents.

They won’t trouble Barcelona, but if they could only manage to remember how to train set pieces, they might be good enough to push Real for the second spot. —TK

Overall grade: A-

AC Milan — Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit

Total incomings — €71m

• Youssouf Fofana — €20m

• Strahinja Pavlović — €18m

• Emerson Royal — €15m + €3m add-ons

• Álvaro Morata — €13m

• Álex Jiménez — €5m

• Tammy Abraham — Loan

Fofana was a much needed no-nonsense, all-rounder addition to a midfield with a lot of guys who have a sensational skill or two, but don’t actually do a lot of ball-progressing or ball-winning.

Pavlović looks like a very talented young defender. Morata is fine, Jiménez is low risk, Abraham is no risk. So far, so good.

But paying that much for Emerson Royal, a player who they probably shouldn’t have picked up on a free… oof. —KM

Ted: B | Ravi: B+ | Kim: B-

Total outgoings — €28.5m

• Charles De Ketelaere — €22m

• Rude Krunic — €3.5m

• Jan-Carlo Simic — €3m

• Olivier Giroud — Free

• Mattia Caldara — Free

• Simon Kjaer — Free

• 4 senior players loaned (including Alexis Saelemaekers)

So, about the aforementioned midfielders Fofana is replacing? Milan didn’t actually sell any of them. They didn’t sell any of the center backs they were rumoured to be parting with either, despite Pavlović’s arrival. There’s a tiny bit of squad bloat going on here.

Those are some big wages for old/bad players off the books though, so good job on that! —KM

Ted: B | Ravi: B- | Kim: C+

Milan’s squad looks better on paper than it did last season. Even though they’re off to a pretty poor start in Serie A, I think they did enough to secure top 5 and challenge for the Scudetto. —KM

Overall grade: B

Inter Milan — WTF is going on here

Total incomings — €70.5m

• Davide Frattesi — €27m

• Josep Martinez — €13.5m + €2.5m add-ons

• Marko Arnautovic — €8m

• Carlos Augusto — €7.5m

• Tomas Palacios — €6.5m + €4.5m add-ons

• Luka Topalovic— €1m

• Piotr Zielinski — Free

• Mehdi Taremi — Free

Do you know what is confusing? Prices paid for players moving inside of Italy.

For years there was a practice by Serie A teams that inflated the prices of players transferred between clubs by 2x to help accounting issues and avoid tax. I know about this because StatsBomb were asked to do the work on market value for those players in a vacuum, and our research showed clear and obvious overvaluations that matched what the Italian tax authorities suspected. So if your academic study of transfer fees for players transferring inside of Italy looks weird, that’s why.

This came well after the whole Calciopoli era, which happened right as I started building gambling models for worldwide soccer betting lines, and we had to throw out the entire country’s data so it wouldn’t ruin our samples. Or the era where AC Milan were owned by the Italian Prime Minister and found themselves the beneficiaries of an alarming volume of red cards and penalties awarded. Or the unusual volume of covering the spread the large Italian teams seemed to do as away favorites, a pattern really only repeated in countries like Russia.

"Even though we have had scandals like doping, false passports and betting, I think this is the biggest sporting scandal the country has seen." - on Calciopoli

It’s almost like Italian football can’t help itself. As the plays for the players in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead must contain blood, it feels like Italian football must contain crime.

Just a little.

It’s compulsory.

They can’t help themselves.

It’s what they do.

ANYWAY, where was I?

Oh right, Davide Frattesi was purchased by Inter from Sassuolo for €27m this summer, executing a loan option that became compulsory after Champions League qualification. This comes after Inter sold Andrea Pinamonti to Sassuolo for €20m in an earlier window. €27m is a real amount of money — almost a Conor Gallagher worth of fees. Maybe he’s the Italian Scott McTominay, but that does not seem like a sensible expenditure of cash, even if Inter won the Scudetto at a trot last season.

I’m not saying there was any wrong doing… I’m just saying the numbers versus performance don’t make sense, especially when Italian teams don’t have much money these days. But maybe that’s just me.

To go along with the theme, they moved for 35 year old Marko Arnautovic on a permanent as well. Which, you know, like… sure. Whatever. Zielinski elicits a similar response. He’s not the player that he was 3-4 years ago. This is the type of buy Premier League teams would make a decade ago that would bite them, but Inter Milan are doing it now. Maybe the wages are reasonable?

I think the Carlos Augusto move was a good one — it’s rare that you get a player who is dominant in the air, never gets dribbled past, and creates xG from open play. And to get it from a left back… this I can get behind.

The rest of their business this summer makes me think I don’t understand the requirements to build a great squad in Italy, because they are clearly not the same as what it takes in the Premier League. —TK

Ted: D | Ravi: C+ | Kim: D

Total outgoings — €12.6m

• Gaetano Oristanio — €5m

• Lucien Agoume — €5m

• Mattia Zanotti — €2.6m

• Juan Cuadrado — Free

• Davy Klaassen — Free

• Alexis Sanchez — Free

I feel similarly about Inter as I do about AC Milan. They got some old/bad players on high wages off the books, which is good. They made some money on youth players who were never going to play for them. But they have a little bit of squad bloat, and could have stood to sell a senior player or two. —KM

Ted: C | Ravi: C | Kim: C

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Inter won the title on 94 points last year and opted not to sell any of its star players, nor sign anyone who would challenge for a starting XI place. All the star players are 25-to-30 years old. The grade is what it is because they didn’t make any good moves, but perhaps staying put turns out to be their best move. —KM

Overall grade: C-

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