Something changed in Madrid with the arrival of Neymar in European football. The war between the white club and Barça for his signing, in the summer of 2013, drove up the price of the player’s transfer and the 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 attract prematurely, before they exploded onto the market, the young Brazilian talents who are tipped to become the new Neymar.
The man chosen to direct that operation that is so profitable for Madrid was Juni Calafat, a person very close to Ronaldo Nazario, who had previously advised Ramón Martínez in signing Casemiro. Today, eight years and ten Brazilian player signings later, Calafat, the club’s head of international football, has placed four of his bets in Madrid’s standard starting eleven. They are Casemiro himself plus Militao, Rodrygo and Vinicius, a quartet that today are indisputable starters for Ancelotti.
Between the four of them, they have combined for 68 games this season, 12 goals and 9 assists. The one who has played the most has been Vini (18), in which he has scored ten goals. Militao is, however, the one who has played the highest percentage of minutes: 94.2% of the total. Only one game has been missed due to rest. Rodrygo is, for the moment, the least regular, but he already has 610 minutes and missed two games due to injury.
Calafat’s successes
Real Madrid’s confidence in Juni Calafat has been strengthened in such a way that he is now the key man at the club not only in Brazil, but in the entire international market. It was he, for example, who was in charge of establishing the first contacts with Camavinga’s camp, a couple of years ago, in an operation that had been simmering until coming to fruition last summer. There is no promising player in international football that Madrid does not have monitored and even contacted. Calafat’s right-hand man in Brazil is Paulo Henrique Xavier, former member of Manchester United scouting and closely related to the coaching staff of the Brazilian Football Confederation itself.
Regarding 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 talents have been inflated. The last three bets of Madrid, which have Calafat’s signature, have not been cheap: Vinicius (45 million at 16 years old), Rodrygo (40 million at 17) and Reinier (30 at 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 paying off.
LaLiga Santander
* Data updated as of November 25, 2021
The path between Casemiro and the success of the signings of Vinicius, Militao and Rodrygo has not been a bed of roses. There have also been unsuccessful bets. Luckily, none of them have come at an excessive cost. In January 2014, Juni Calafat arranged the arrival of two forwards on loan to the white team, Willian José and Pablo Teixeira (the latter only played 63 minutes). None stayed. They were followed by Abner, an 18-year-old left-back later affected by a double serious injury (he has returned to Coritiba), and shortly after, already in 2015, he recommended Lucas Silva. Costing €14M, he immediately stopped being counted on by Ancelotti (in the coach’s first spell) and these days he is trying to get his career back on track at Grêmio.
There are also operations carried out by Calafat that could not come to fruition. The war to snap up young talents is so fierce that Madrid have 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 club that won the race by paying 33 million euros to Palmeiras. That same summer, Madrid and Barcelona also fought for the player who is now Shakhtar centre-back Marlon, who was finally signed by Barcelona for five million, although Madrid tried to ‘steal’ him in extremis without success.
There is a new player on the table. His name is Matheus França, he is 17 years old, he plays for Flamengo and his recent performances in the club’s youth teams have not gone unnoticed in Europe. Nor by Calafat’s men in Brazil. In recent weeks Matheus signed a contract extension until 2027 with a release clause of 100 million, the highest in the history of Mengão. Brazilian clubs are rubbing their hands over the competition in Europe to sign promising youngsters. For the moment, Madrid’s strategy works… Now three youngsters, Militao, Vinicius and Rodrygo, join Casemiro in Ancelotti’s starting lineup.