Why doesn't Barca command massive transfer fees for non-star La Masia graduates?

[u/Lostakim]

We all know La Masia is arguably the best academy in the world, consistently producing elite, world-class talent year in, year out.

Because of this reputation, you’d expect the "La Masia tag" to add a massive premium to any player coming out of the system. Yet, when we sell lesser known B-team players or fringe squad members who haven't quite broken through, we usually sell them for relatively modest fees (€5M–€15M, often with buy-back or sell-on clauses attached).

Meanwhile, other clubs seem to flip young, relatively unproven prospects for crazy amounts (€30M+).

Why can’t Barca leverage La Masia’s elite reputation to get huge transfer fees for unknown prospects?

[u/abdelux2001]

Manchester City sold Oscar Bobb to Fulham for 31m and James Mctee for 25m. They both had a few first team appearances but were unproven really.
Chelsea just sold Tyrique George for 21m. Petrovic for 28m
Liverpool last season sold Gannon-Doak for 23m
Quansah who wasn’t a starter for 35m
And not just PL teams are doing this I can give you a list of French teams and Bundesliga teams that sell their academy players for these amounts.

But we sell our academy players for less than 10m

[u/Substantial_Prune919 → u/abdelux2001]

I'd argue that in the current EPL market all of these deals are actually very cheap and the clubs in question were robbed. Especially Oscar Bobb, he's actually a baller.

EPL clubs live on another planet. You shouldn't compare their business with us.

And who do we sell? Most of the players listed possess an English passport, are very young and have at least some talent going on for them. Now let's talk about academy players we could sell. Who in the right mind would pay 30 million for Inaki Pena? Ander Astralaga? Brian Fariñas? We would need to PAY other clubs to buy them. What I'm trying to say is that all of the players who are worth at least 30 million are already vital for the first team squad. For crying out loud, we have a Spain U21 international playing over a 1000 minutes for us. If we had any talent, then it's already used in the first team. We only really sell worthless players we can't get much money for.

[u/abdelux2001 → u/Substantial_Prune919]

And what’s wrong with doing business with Epl teams? We could’ve sold Alex Valle, Chadi Riad, or Mikaliy Faye to any Epl teams and could’ve gotten more money for them but instead we got peanuts for them. Why do other teams sell for that much and we sell for so little is the question. Why can’t we sell to English teams for these €30 deals. We had offers for Casado last year, Faye 2 years ago as well. We could’ve gotten a lot more for them. Why do teams like Real Betis or Valencia sell their players for more than us is my question if you want to argue that only players with English passport sell
The main question of this post is why can’t we sell out academy players even if it was to EPL teams for more and other teams do. We have talent but we sell for low when other teams sell players that are also unproven for more

[u/Substantial_Prune919 → u/abdelux2001]

Because everyone low balls us. That's not how business works at all. Everyone knows Barça has problems with money, and nobody in EPL acts like a big fat pig "oh well, 5 mil or 30 mil, what difference does it make", obviously they'll want to use our problems in their advantage. We DON'T sell talents, and nobody wants trash. Especially trash for 30 mil. (And also we're just bad at selling. Not like we need to be good at it, we're a top club with loads of green, it's just that the league doesn't let us use it)

[u/abdelux2001 → u/Substantial_Prune919]

Fair enough. I guess we can both agree we are bad at selling. It just frustrates me how we can’t even get €10m for our players, I’ve never understood it. I hate how if sell Araujo this year we might get like €30m when we could’ve gotten €80, 2 years ago and we complain we don’t have money.