Alvaro Arbeloa continues to raid his former club, signing a third Real Madrid player in Manuel Angel, the captain who led his Juvenil A team to a treble in the 2022/23 season.
Fulham coach Alvaro Arbeloa has just signed his third Madrid player. It is Manuel Angel, who captained that historic Juvenil A team led by Arbeloa himself and with which he won the category treble (League, Copa del Rey, and Copa de Campeones). Therefore, he was the second option to reinforce the midfield after Real Madrid's constant refusal to sell Thiago Pitarch.
Jose Mourinho and the club decided to prevent the academy player's departure because they saw enough quality in him to have a role as a substitute this season. Faced with this, Arbeloa decided to reunite with his captain and midfield leader during that historic 2022/23 season, which helped him gain prestige as a coach across different categories at the white team.
Arbeloa has always kept an eye on Manuel's future and it was the delicate market situation that allowed him to sign him in a deal that was closed at €4 million, with Real Madrid keeping 50% of the player's rights, a stipulation that we have recently discussed and that the club usually handles when selling players formed at La Fabrica, as just happened with Chema Andres, Manuel's teammate in the lower categories.
The young academy player had had a difficult summer because the newly arrived Mourinho did not consider him even for the first team's preseason; he was also separated from Castilla, so he needed a resolution soon. It was here that Arbeloa came "to the rescue" to take him to the Premier League as one of his trusted midfielders to aim for good results for the London team in the current campaign.
In this way, the now-Fulham player joins a long list of Real Madrid academy players who are sold this summer, a list headed by Nico Paz, who went to Como for €60 million. Gonzalo Garcia, whom we recently mentioned, went to Fulham for €40 million; Victor Munoz was sold to Liverpool for €20.5 million; and Mario Gila, who was bought by AC Milan, saw Madrid receive €15 million, since it owned 50% of the player.
With such an amount of income, they were close to matching the €228 million spent on the club's multiple signings, becoming something completely historic, since it had never reached such a figure in sales exclusively of players produced at 'La Fabrica,' which is worthy of applause for the club, since few institutions can boast of such a feat.
Let's see how Angel does at the Premier League.
