How Is This Club Able To Compete With Real Madrid , Juventus And PSG?

Uruguayan second-tier side Deportivo Maldonado average crowds of less than 350 but are vying for the hottest South American starlets with the world’s richest football clubs. How? FFT investigates…

- Sebastian Garcia

In a summer when Paul Pogba broke news of his own £89 million move to Manchester United, Chelsea surprisingly re-signed David Luiz for £30m and Arsenal, for some reason, desperately tried to capture Jamie Vardy, perhaps one of the transfer window’s most unusual deals went largely unnoticed.

When Argentina Under-23 striker Jonathan Calleri confirmed his loan switch to West Ham United in the middle of August 2016, the media coverage was fairly minimal. Even the frankly dreadful Simone Zaza, who also arrived on loan in east London during the same month, caused more fanfare. The Hammers had reportedly paid a £4m loan fee and have an option to buy the Argentine for £16m, a deal that would represent a tidy and rapid profit for a club whose gates rarely surpass a few hundred.

Calleri is a product of the All Boys youth academy – the same club where Carlos Tevez, another Argentine player to have turned out for the Hammers, began his career. In fact, both moved from All Boys, now in the Argentine Second Division, to Boca Juniors. But that is where the two career paths veer off in very different directions.

In January 2016, 18 months after acquiring a 20-year-old Calleri for £765,000, Boca sold him on for £9.3m.

But what stood out the most wasn’t that whopping 1,115 per cent mark-up on a player who had played just 41 league matches for the Bombonera club, rather the fact that the buyer was not your typical plunderer of hot South American talent. Not PSG, Benfica, Real Madrid or Juventus. Not even Shanghai Shenhua or Guangzhou Evergrande. No, the outfit that had enough money to fork out almost £10m for the youngster was Deportivo Maldonado. 

Who? Well, quite.