BfB

July and August 2025 have been called The Summer of Strikers. Benjamin Šeško’s relocation to Manchester United from RB Leipzig for around £78m continues a heartbeat of players moving around football who have the potential to be great, but perhaps it might be said are not great now.

Who are the best footballer’s at the moment? Who are the most effective? How much do those things get confused? Liverpool signings Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike are twenty-two and twenty-three respectively, they are the two most expensive signings to date this Summer, but while Wirtz is a decorated player, both have been signed because of what they might do, rather than what they have.

Jamie Gittens and Joao Pedro have joined Chelsea because they are good but could be great, and Noni Madueke has moved on because he is only good, but Arsenal think he could achieve something great with them.

Kevin De Bruyne and Jack Grealish, who have been a part of a team which won the Premier League, are seeping away from Manchester City without much comment on a free transfer in the first case, and on loan in the other.

All of which is a way of asking are clubs over valuing potential.

Potential

Potential in football is a wonderful thing. Every signing might be the next five o’clock hero. Every new recruit might turn things around. At most clubs at most levels, potential is largely synonymous with optimism. Occasionally a club will sign a player with an idea that they may improve and get a return, but unless that player is likely to move to one of the moneyed few in the game then the idea of a sell on is fanciful.

Yet when selling into a selection of clubs – most of the English Premier League, a few other clubs around Europe – the value of potential goes far beyond the optimistic and seems to become something actualised.

Taking the £82m which Liverpool spent on Ekitike as an example, it is very difficult on the strength of his current profile to justify that. Darwin Núñez has just won the Premier League and is leaving the Anfield club for half that amount, Luis Diaz also has a winner’s medal and is seemingly less valuable than Ekitike.

Darwin Núñez and Luis Diaz have moved on to allow manager Arne Slot to build a team, and this talk of value is always a simplification, but if we put any store in the idea that the Free Market can value an asset then we have to wonder why the actual: Premier League Winning Striker, is valued at less than the Potential Premier League Winning Striker.

Capable

De Bruyne slipped off to Napoli on a free transfer, having been keen to stay at Manchester City, but not getting the offer he wanted. The machinations of individual movements are difficult to discuss, but the queue of clubs keen on the 33-year-old Belgian seemed to be short of a certain type of team.

Like Darwin Núñez, Theo Hernández leaves Milan having seemingly been at a successful club, has joined the Saudi Arabian League. Twenty-six and twenty-seven are young for players to drop to a second rate league but both are very capable players. But who wants capable? Capable does not win awards. The next Lionel Messi is not just “capable.”

To a section of very well off clubs, Potential seems to be overvalued, to the extent that it is worth more than actual performance. The chance of having a future Ballon d’Or winner seems to be more valued than the reality of having a very good player.

Paid

Potential is being paid for as if it is actualised. Florian Wirtz may go on to be a generationally great player, but even if he were to achieve everything one could hope for, he would not represent great value. As with Enzo Fernández at Chelsea before him, if Club and Actual World Cups follow then the nine figure fee will seem good value, but never cheap.

Wirtz, Fernández, and most of the rest of the Chelsea squad along with the other high potential signings are having their potential valued as if it is actualised. The secret to buying a high potential player is to pay for them as if they are as good as they are in your flights of fancy.

João Félix, who once cost £113m, slunk off to Al-Nassr this summer for £26m football finally having tired on a player who was good, but never as good as people thought he could be.

A lesson if ever there was one.