Arsenal is going to kick themselves for selling their “sizzling” prodigy for only £200,000 when he is now worth £52 million.
The youth program at Arsenal has been responsible for the development of a number of very good players over the years, but the club made a grave error when it allowed one of these youngsters to go for a pittance.
Arsenal has reaped the advantages over the years of discovering potential from the academy, with Mikel Arteta’s current crop illustrating how far hard effort can catapult starlets eager to graduate from Hale End. Over the years, Arsenal has reaped the benefits of discovering talent from the academy.
The Gunners had a tremendously successful season in 2022–2023, which prompted a challenge for the Premier League title headed by the likes of Bukayo Saka, probably the club’s best ever academy graduate. The Gunners eventually won the Premier League title.
Saka, who first joined Arsenal’s development program when he was eight years old and advanced through the ranks, is now an important player for the club, earning £195k a week and relishing his status as a 2023 Ballon d’Or Nominee. Saka began his career with Arsenal’s youth program when he was eight years old.
However, not every outstanding talent from the north London setup has chosen Arsenal as the location to mature as a senior player there. The 22-year-old wonder is not the only star to have recently broken through the Hale End doors to influence the first team. Eddie Nketiah and Emilia Smith-Rowe have followed suit.
Folarin Balogun, a striker who came up through the Gunners youth system, departed his hometown club to sign for Monaco in a deal worth £35 million this summer. Prior to making the move, Balogun had a successful loan stint with Ligue 1 team Reims.
Although Arsenal made a decent profit off of the sale of the 22-year-old player, previous departures from the capital have proven to be enormous financial mistakes for the club, with the loss of Donyell Malen being the most costly of these mistakes.
Donyell Malen enjoyed a prosperous career at Arsenal throughout his time there.
Malen, a Dutch prodigy, moved to Hale End from Ajax in 2015 at the age of 16 as a result of the Gunners recognizing promise in the dynamic young attacker. Malen is known as a prodigy.
The young phenom, who was born in 1999, enjoyed a fruitful two years in England, during which he participated in 67 games at both the U18 and U21 levels and netted 27 goals for the club.
At the end of the first half at Emirates Stadium, #AFCU23 is behind 2-1.
A picture of Donyell Malen’s goal, which cut the lead in half, is shown here for your viewing pleasure.Twitter: https://twitter.com/xKLGhWXUTG
Arsenal (@Arsenal) shared a post on March 13, 2017:
Dennis Bergkamp, his former coach at Ajax U10s and a well-liked figure in Islington, was a major source of motivation for him during his time at Arsenal. A bronze statue of Dennis Bergkamp can be found outside of the Emirates Stadium.
The young man, who was still a teenager at the time, was touted to have a prosperous future while he was still attending the academy. His previous agent, Mini Raiola, believed that he would one day become a “revelation” in north London.
Donyell Malen was offered a pittance to leave Arsenal, and he accepted it.
Although the forward had a good experience during his time in England, he made the decision in 2017 to continue his career in the Netherlands rather than extending his contract with Arsenal. He gave the reason that there were more opportunities for him in the Netherlands.
Malen was swiftly able to achieve his goals after being picked up by PSV Eindhoven in that year for a fee that was rumored to be around in the neighborhood of £200,000.
It became instantly apparent where the departing forward’s career was headed, and with that came the understanding of how bad the choice to permit his release for less than one million pounds was. It was immediately plain where the career of the departed forward was heading.
In the summer of 2018, Football Transfers documented the beginning of Malen’s ascent in worth, noting that his expected transfer value (xTV) sat at €4 million (£3.4 million) just one year after his departure for £200 thousand.
The agony that Arsenal felt at losing the striker at such a low figure only one year before he was set to make his professional debut was compounded by the fact that the Dutchman’s xTV practically increased every year after that, as indicated in the table that is located above this one.
The incredible ascent that Donyell Malen has made at PSV
Malen made his first appearance for PSV’s first team a year after making his debut. As a result of his heroics with the Under-21 team during the 2017–18 season, during which he scored 13 goals and collected three assists in 22 games, he was promoted to the senior squad a year after making his debut.
The Dutch international made four appearances in the Eredivisie during that season, which helped pave the way for his senior debut the season after, when he played in 31 games across all competitions.
The astute forward had ten goals and five assists in the 2018–19 Eredivisie season, and he improved his record the following year with 11 goals despite only playing 14 games due to a major knee injury that kept him out for about 200 days. In the previous season, he had scored 10 goals and earned five assists.
There was some fear that the adolescent might lose some of his pace and proficiency in the final third as a result of surgery; however, this did not turn out to be the case as he scored 27 goals in 32 games in the 2020/21 Eredivisie season.
At the end of that season, Malen finished as the second-highest scorer in the league at the age of 22, and it wasn’t long before his talents were noticed outside of the nation in which he was born and raised.
Donyell Malen embarked on his epic voyage to several continents.
After Jadon Sancho made his sensational transfer to Manchester United in 2021, Borussia Dortmund were in need of offensive reinforcements and considered Malen as the ideal candidate to fill the void created by the Englishman.
PSV received €30 million (or £26 million) from Dortmund in exchange for the Dutch player, which is an amount that is 12900% higher than the sum Arsenal paid PSV for Malen.
Although Dortmund had hoped to see home comparisons between the former Arsenal starlet and Sancho in the 2021/22 season, the similarities between the two players in the final third were not even close to being the same.
Malen and Sancho both got off to sluggish starts when they first arrived at their respective clubs. However, the Dutch international scored nine goals and assisted six times for Dortmund that season, while Sancho scored five goals and assisted three times. Both players made 38 appearances for their clubs.
The player who cost £26 million generated 18 goals in 35 games during the previous campaign, scoring 10 and assisting on eight more. He is well on his way to breaking that record, as he already has four goals and two assists in 12 appearances during the 2023/24 campaign.
The value of Donyell Malen’s stock on the market has increased significantly.
His xTV reached its all-time high of €48.8 million (£42.4 million) in the summer of 2022, and the CIES Football Observatory estimates that his current market worth is €60 million (£52 million).
Arsenal are regularly reminded of the £200k price tag that they lost the former academy star for, with his current value reading 25900% larger than that. Earlier this year, U23 scout Antonio Mango referred to him as a “sizzling” for his form at Dortmund. Arsenal are also reminded of the fact that his current value is 25900% greater than that.
In spite of the fact that it is more satisfying to watch a once-promising prodigy prosper on the grandest stages of domestic football, the Gunners really passed up a great opportunity to acquire Malen.
