Something changed in Madrid with the arrival of Neymar to European football. The war between the white entity and Barça for his signing, in the summer of 2013, he raised the player’s transfer price and commissions so much that the case ended up in court. It cost Barça dearly. Shortly after, Madrid made a 180-degree turn in its international policy and increased its efforts to prematurely capture, before they exploded in the market, the young Brazilian talents who are called to become the new Neymar. The last case advanced by AS, the interest in Matheus do Nascimento, is a clear example. But before there were many more.
The man chosen to direct this operation that is so profitable for Madrid was Juni Calafat, a person very close to Ronaldo Nazario, who had previously advised Ramón Martínez on the hiring of Casemiro. Today, eight years and ten signings of Brazilian players later, Calafat, the club’s head of international football, has placed four of his bets on Madrid’s starting eleven. They are Casemiro himself plus Militao, Rodrygo (Although he alternates with Valverde, he also bets on Juni) and Vinicius, a flashy poker player.
The successes of Calafat
Real Madrid’s trust in Juni Calafat has been strengthened in such a way that he is now the club’s strong man not only in Brazil, but throughout the international market. It was he, for example, who was in charge of establishing the first contacts with the Camavinga environment, a couple of years ago, in an operation that has been slowly forging until it broke last summer. There is no player who promises in international football that Madrid has not satellited and even contacted. Calafat’s strong man in Brazil is Paulo Henrique Xavier, a former member of Manchester United’s scouting team and closely related to the technical staff of the Brazilian Football Confederation itself.
With regard to the Brazilian market, there is an underground war unleashed between the main teams in Europe to find the Neymar of the future, someone who combines performance on the pitch and off it in terms of marketing. So much so that the prices of young talent have been inflated. The last three Madrid bets, signed by Calafat, have not been cheap: Vinicius (45 million with 16 years), Rodrygo (40 million with 17) and Reinier (30 with 17). The first two have a much higher real market value today. The third, Reinier, has yet to explode and his loan at Dortmund is not working out. Will Matheus Nascimento be the next?
The road between Casemiro and the journey that the hiring of Vinicius, Militao and Rodrygo have meant, has not been a bed of roses. There have also been failed bets. Luckily, none of them have had an excessive cost. In January 2014, Juni Calafat improvised the arrival of two strikers on loan to the Whites’ reserve team, Willian José and Pablo Teixeira (the latter barely played 63 minutes). None stayed. They were followed by Abner, an 18-year-old left-back affected later by a serious double injury (he has returned to Coritiba) and shortly after, already in 2015, he recommended Lucas Silva. He cost €14M, immediately stopped counting for Ancelotti (in the first stage of the technician) and these days he is trying to get off the ground at the Gremio.
some failure
There are also operations carried out by Calafat that have not been able to come to fruition. The war is so fierce to take away young talent that Madrid has sometimes been forced to withdraw. It happened in 2016 with Gabriel Jesus. Real Madrid, Barça and Manchester City fought for him. It was finally the English entity that took the cat to the water by paying 33 million euros to Palmeiras. That same summer, Madrid and Barcelona also fought for what is now central to Shakhtar Marlon, who was finally signed by Barcelona for five million, although Madrid tried to ‘steal him’ in extremis without success.
Two new goals
There are two new players that are on Madrid’s table. On the one hand, Matheus França, is 17 years old, He plays for Flamengo and his recent performances in the club’s lower teams have not gone unnoticed in Europe. The other is Matheus Nascimento, 18, a center forward for Botafogo. Brazilian clubs are rubbing their hands over the competition in Europe to take on promising youngsters. At the moment, Madrid’s strategy works…
