Top 10 market value increases: Lamine Yamal way ahead of new Arsenal signing (and everyone else)

Will Ford 24 Jul 2024 8:35 PM

Lamine Yamal unsurprisingly tops the list of market value increases.

There are three England players in the top five of this list of the top 10 players with the greatest increase in their market values since the start of last season across Europe’s biggest leagues. No prizes for guessing which child star of Euro 2024 tops it by a mile.

Anyway, we’ve differentiated players with the same increase in market value by the percentage increase which means another England star just misses out. All data is courtesy of the wonderful Transfermarkt.

10) Riccardo Califiori (Arsenal): €4.5m to €45m (+€40.5m)
There are i’s to dot, t’s to cross and knees to bang with that hammer thing, but it’s as good as done. Mikel Arteta is doing his best Pep Guardiola impression and signing all the centre-backs. Calafiori was worth €30m before the start of Euro 2024, where he did that assist against Croatia which Arsenal will undoubtedly insist isn’t the reason they signed him but absolutely is.

9) Joshua Zirkzee (Manchester United): €9m to €50m (+€41m)
He got 14 goals and nine assists in 58 games for Bologna, which isn’t anything to write home about and perhaps explains why Wout Weghorst was the preferred option off the bench for Ronald Koeman at the Euros. But Manchester United were far from the only side interested in a forward who had youth and a meagre release clause on his side to get him the move to Old Trafford.

8) Florian Wirtz (Bayer Leverkusen): €85m to €130m (+€45m)
Named Player of the Season in Germany after he managed 11 goals and 12 assists to plunge Harry Kane further into the depths of misery by winning the Bundesliga with Bayer Leverkusen, before further impressing at Euro 2024. Might he be Kevin De Bruyne’s replacement at Manchester City? He’s one of the options.

7) Joao Neves (Benfica): €10m to €55m (+€45m)
The new Manchester United transfer team were reportedly sniffing around the midfielder in January with a view to a summer move, presumably without having googled his price tag. They apparently viewed a 19-year-old central midfielder from Benfica who’s made 75 senior appearances as a ‘priority investment’ after a ‘challenging season’. Who are they, Chelsea?

He’s got a £103m release clause which would have required United to be very like Chelsea indeed if Benfica had stuck to it, but the Portuguese club’s president has said they are now ‘evaluating’ an offer of less than that. From United? Nah, PSG.

6) Savio (Girona): €5m to €50m (+€45m)
His starring role for Girona last season earned him a move to the Spanish side’s much bigger brother Manchester City (which is all a bit grim) and a place in the Brazil squad for the Copa America, where he scored in his only start against Paraguay. It’s all coming up roses for Savio.

5) Viktor Gyokeres (Sporting): €13m to €65m (+€52m)
It pays to be young in terms of the market value increase real quiz, but as Gyokeres proves, being plucked from relative obscurity also does the trick. Few fans outside England or Sweden would even have heard of the 25-year-old before last summer, when Sporting Lisbon paid Coventry City €20m for his services. And even then, most radars won’t have started pinging until December, when the striker needs of Arsenal and Chelsea led transfer gossipmongers to tip them with a move for the in-form marksman.

Forty-three goals and 15 assists in 50 games is just too good a return to ignore, and makes the face-value ridiculousness of a 400% mark-up in eight months a pill sweet enough for Arsenal or other interested parties to swallow. That £86m release clause doesn’t seem so silly anymore.

4) Kobbie Mainoo (Manchester United): €800k to €55m (+€54.2m)
One of few bright spots for United in a difficult season, and he was bright enough to earn a place in Gareth Southgate’s England squad and then the team at Euro 2024, where Europe stood up and took notice of a midfielder with absurd confidence and ability on the back of just 35 senior appearances for his club.

Fingers crossed he remains injury free and Ineos can source him a worthy midfield partner, because we could be about to see something really special.

3) Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid) : €120m to €180m (+€60m)
The La Liga Player of the Season and a Champions League winner, it’s fair to say Jude Bellingham enjoyed his first season at Real Madrid.

And he’ll soon be able to rely on Kylian Mbappe to lessen a goalscoring burden that he took on his shoulders as though it’s a scarf made of butterfly wings and meringue. Rather less cool in an England shirt this summer, but scored a worldy of an overhead kick and looked understandably knackered.

None of his feats thus far or in the future will surpass his decision to disregard Sir Alex Ferguson’s sweet nothings on his tour of the run-down Manchester United training complex in March 2020. Good call, Jude. Good call.

2) Cole Palmer (Chelsea): €15m to €80m (+€65m)
He flew in the face of his teammates’ mediocrity to near enough singlehandedly guide Chelsea to sixth in the Premier League. While most of his fellow Blues at best stagnated and at worst crumbled under the pressure of playing for the club, for much of the season Palmer bore the entire creative load of a £1bn squad with the confidence of a man who’s thrown ten successive apple cores into the living room bin.

Only Erling Haaland (27) scored more than his 22 Premier League goals and no-one had more than his 33 goal contributions. He’s been a wonderful signing and we saw his stock rise further at the European Championships, as his assist for Ollie Wtakins got England through the semi-final and his goal against Spain gave them brief hope in the final.

1) Lamine Yamal (Barcelona): €0m to €120m (+€120m)
Umbrella by Rihanna Ft. Jay Z was No.1 when Yamal was born in the summer of 2007. Thierry Henry was moving to Barcelona and Fernando Torres to Liverpool.

“Let’s see what the future holds without comparing him with Messi,” Xavi said when the 16-year-old signed a new contract until 2026 with a £1bn release clause, before mentioning Messi’s name a further four times in his press conference. Everyone’s doing it now, and while we’re trying not to get too ahead of ourselves, Messi certainly wasn’t doing what Yamal is doing at his age.

He’s the youngest ever La Liga goalscorer, the youngest ever to score a goal for Spain and the youngest player to win a European Championship or World Cup. No player has set up more goals at a Euros than Lamal (4) and nobody has ever been directly involved in goals in a quarter-final, semi-final and final before Yamal achieved the feat. €120m would be a snip.

F365 Features Jude Bellingham

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