Top 10 historic market values 

©IMAGO

Should Manchester City go on to win this season’s Premier League title, it will be a fitting conclusion for one of the club’s greatest ever servants. Earlier this month, Bernardo Silva confirmed that he would depart the Etihad club at the end of this current season, drawing a line under nine years in England that has – so far – seen the midfielder win no less than six league titles, two FA Cups, five League Cups and the all-important Champions League success in 2023. Such a trophy haul not only makes Silva a potential legend of the English top-flight, but undoubtedly cements his spot among Man City’s greatest ever players.

However, while it may be easy to forget, Silva did, in fact, achieve quite a lot before making the move to Manchester. Prior to his €50 million move to the English giants, Silva spent three years at Monaco, where he won a Ligue 1 title in 2017. And prior to that, he came through the ranks at Benfica. However, curiously, Silva only made three appearances for his boyhood club before making a swift departure for the south of France. Despite that, the Portugal international is still regarded as one of the Liga Portugal club’s greatest ever products. And when we thumb through the pages of history, we can see that Silva is undoubtedly one of the best ever players to develop at Benfica.

The top 10 most valuable Benfica academy gradutes of all time

When we take a look at the historic market values of every player to have worked their way through Benfica’s academy and rank them by their highest ever market value, we can see that Silva is arguably one of the club’s greatest ever youth players. While Silva’s current market value may only be €27m – which, admittedly, remains the third highest in the world for players born in 1994 – the Portugal talent hit a record high of €100m in June 2019 and maintained a market value of around €80m for the best part of four years after that. To no great surprise, there are very few academy graduates from Benfica that can rival such a feat, with only current European champion and Paris Saint-Germain midfield maestro João Neves overtaking his compatriot with a current market value of €110m at this moment in time.

As we can see in the top 10 graph, Benfica can lay claim to a seemingly unrivalled list of academy players that have gone on to dominate European football. Whether it be former Atletico Madrid star João Félix (€100m), fellow Man City stars Rúben Dias (€80m), Ederson (€70m) or João Cancelo (€70m), there are a number of outstanding Portuguese players that began their careers at Benfica. Curiously, two young players in António Silva and Geovany Quenda already make the top 10 list with market values of €45m, with the latter swapping one side of Lisbon for the other earlier on in his career before agreeing to make the move to Chelsea next season. It remains to be seen how good either prospect will be, but they’d have to have truly outstanding careers to match what Silva achieved at Man City.