Insights
Deep-dive analysis and rankings generated from our market valuations.
The Mercato Report
Editorial analysis generated from live transfer data — top spenders, sellers, and the biggest deals of the current window.
Analysis
Transfer market breakdowns
Christopher Nkunku tops the ratings in the top 8 leagues: 9-11 October weekend review
Christopher Nkunku (RB Leipzig) led all players with a 9.48 rating, ahead of Maarten Vandevoordt (9.28) and Yoann Cathline (9.13), across 69 matches in eight leagues.
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Michael Olise tops the ratings in the top 8 leagues: 18-20 September weekend review
Michael Olise (FC Bayern München) led all players with a 10.00 rating, ahead of Brian Brobbey (9.97) and Raphinha (9.49), across 75 matches in eight leagues.
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Franco Mastantuono's hat-trick headlined a goal-heavy top-5-league weekend — but the valuation model didn't move on it alone
Fiorentina's 19-year-old scored three goals in a 4-2 win at Venezia and posted the highest individual rating (9.98) of any player across the top 5 leagues this weekend, ahead of Kylian Mbappé's 9.42 in a 4-1 Real Madrid win. Two Bundesliga sides won 5-0 on the same afternoon, and Inter survived a five-goal Udinese fightback — but the weekend's best individual performances didn't all move the valuation needle by the same amount.
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Ayyoub Bouaddi's Champions League debut for Manchester City: 75 minutes, a clean sheet, and 98% passing
€95M bought Manchester City an 18-year-old who started his first Champions League match, played 75 minutes, completed 54 of 55 passes, and helped keep a clean sheet. It was a controlled, low-risk debut — not the kind of statement match a fee that size usually gets judged against.
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The Premier League spent €3.96B this summer — and mostly traded with itself
Premier League clubs spent nearly €4B across 127 signings, more than the other four top leagues combined. But the four biggest deals in the league all involved two Premier League clubs on both ends — this window looks less like importing talent and more like redistributing it internally.
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Real Madrid went shopping abroad while La Liga sold off its fringes at home
La Liga posted a €283.6M net spend this window, but the two biggest incoming deals — Yan Diomande from RB Leipzig and Anthony Gordon from Newcastle — both came from outside the league entirely, while most of the league's outgoing business was smaller, domestic housekeeping.
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Serie A rebuilt its attack this summer by importing Paris Saint-Germain's castoffs
AC Milan and Juventus spent a combined €159.2M on three players PSG no longer wanted — Gonçalo Ramos, Randal Kolo Muani and, via RB Leipzig, the pattern extends to Loïs Openda too. Serie A's €524.2M net outlay this window was largely a story of recruiting proven quality other big clubs had already decided to move on from.
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One sale funded the Bundesliga's entire summer — and Bayer Leverkusen spent most of it
The Bundesliga is one of only two top-5 leagues to finish this window net positive, at +€106.5M — and RB Leipzig's single €125M sale of Yan Diomande to Real Madrid is bigger than that entire league-wide surplus. Bayer Leverkusen, meanwhile, ran the busiest shop in the league on both sides of the ledger.
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Ligue 1 posted the biggest surplus in Europe — and Paris Saint-Germain's own attack sales are why
Ligue 1 finished this window +€723.5M net, the largest surplus of any top-5 league — built almost entirely on Paris Saint-Germain selling Bradley Barcola (€125M) and Gonçalo Ramos (€74M) for more than it spent replacing them with Maghnes Akliouche, Ferran Torres and Mika Godts combined.
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Hull City signed 14 players for less than Manchester City spent on three
Two ways to spend €170-200M this summer: Hull City rebuilt almost half a squad across 14 separate deals, while Manchester City put nearly as much into a single midfielder. Both are rational strategies — they just answer different problems.
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Chelsea sold more than anyone in Europe this summer — and still finished €118M in credit
Chelsea generated €444M in sales, the most of any club in the top 5 leagues, then spent €326M buying it straight back into new signings. That combination — sell high, reinvest immediately — is a deliberate trading strategy, not a fire sale, and it looks completely different from how Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain spent their summer.
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Why we cap monthly valuation swings — and what that trade-off costs us
A single monthly valuation can move at most 30% in either direction, whatever the underlying model computes. That cap just caught — and partly hid — a real bug in Harry Kane's number. Here's the honest version of why the rule exists anyway.
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Why midfielders are driving the biggest valuation jumps of summer 2026
Caicedo, Zaïre-Emery, Gravenberch and Vitinha have each gained 25-45% in valuation since the previous snapshot. The pattern isn’t about goals — it’s about clubs whose entire system now runs through one specific player.
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The valuation fallers of summer 2026 tell two different stories
Lamine Yamal and Kylian Mbappé lost 11-14% each, but for opposite reasons to Pio Esposito’s 45% drop or Emmanuel Agbadou’s 76% collapse. Not every faller is a player in decline.
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Casemiro’s free transfer to Inter Miami is a market signal, not a farewell tour
A 34-year-old World Cup winner leaving Manchester United on a free for MLS looks like a retirement move. The valuation trend behind it says the transfer happened a year later than the numbers suggested it should.
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How Mercato XI valuations differ from Transfermarkt
Transfermarkt’s figures are crowd-sourced estimates updated a few times a season. Mercato XI recomputes every player monthly from match-level statistics — which means the two sites will structurally disagree on recently-in-form or recently-injured players, and that’s by design.
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Most Valuable XIs
4-3-3 formation by league
Rankings
By league, position & age
Coming Soon
After May snapshot
Biggest Risers
Players with the largest valuation increase
Squad Value Analysis
Club-by-club breakdown
Transfer vs AI Value
Best and worst deals of the window