A day inside Benfica's academy, the production line for European football

Benfica have made more than £230m in the last three years from selling academy graduates. This is how they develop their young players

By Alex Clapham for These Football Times, part of the Guardian Sport Network

“Look at Ederson of Manchester City. When he came to me he was just a lad from the favelas, too scared to leave his own penalty area. Now he takes bigger risks than anybody in the Premier League. Bernardo Silva is top as well. We sold him to Monaco and after a few weeks he was speaking French on TV, he’s an example. This club gives the boys life skills to grow.” Luís Nascimento, the head coach of Benfica’s under-15 team – who have been crowned national champions in four of the last six seasons – is talking to me at the club’s impressive Caixa Futebol Campus in Seixal on the banks of the River Tagus, a 20-minute ferry ride away from the south side of Lisbon.

In 2006, some fellow by the name Eusébio opened the football centre, which houses 65 kids from around the globe. The factory boasts nine pitches, 20 dressing rooms, two auditoriums, three state-of-the-art gyms and – the crème de la crème – a “360S simulator” in a lab where players work on their technique, go through video analysis and do nutritional and psychological tests. The simulator is like the Footbonaut, first seen at Borussia Dortmund, but Benfica’s version has robotic-like players that move along the walls of each side of the cage. The youngsters are tested on their reaction speeds, vision and execution when aiming for the moving targets after controlling the ball inside the 10-foot circle.

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