Savinho’s £75m move to Spurs is the purest expression of Man City’s multi-club model

How Savinho was moved through the network

Four years later, Savinho is about to leave Manchester City for Tottenham for £75m plus £10m in add-ons, a record sale for the most prominent club in the City Football Group stable.

He got there without ever being a sporting triumph in Manchester, and that is precisely the point.

Savinho's journey is the clearest illustration yet of how CFG's multi-club machine actually works.

City Football Group has links to 12 clubs worldwide, and in an era where player trading has become central to how football is financed, moving an 18-year-old from South America through a network of feeder sides and out the other end for £75m is not a happy accident.

It is the model doing exactly what it was built to do.

Signed from Atletico Mineiro as a record signing for CFG-owned Troyes in 2022, Savinho was immediately sent on loan to PSV for the 2022-23 season, then to fellow CFG club Girona for 2023-24.

In Catalonia he finally caught fire: 37 league appearances, nine goals, eight assists, and a first Champions League qualification in Girona's history.

He was named in the La Liga team of the year. City bought him from Troyes for £30.8m in 2024, a fee that raised eyebrows at the time over whether it represented fair market value.

Quique Carcel, director of football at Girona, spoke to BBC Sport: "Our intention from the moment that we reached the Champions League was to try to get him to stay for another year.

"But logically after making such a big impact, City, Pep and Txiki were already considering having him in their first-team squad."

Why £75m has raised eyebrows

Two Premier League seasons produced two goals and 12 assists. On the pitch, that is a modest return for a £30.8m winger.

On the balance sheet, it is close to £70m of profit if every bonus attached to his move to north London is triggered, a figure that has caught many in the game by surprise.

City's counter-argument is straightforward: buying an 18-year-old in Brazil and selling him for £75m four years later is a sporting success too, just one measured over a longer horizon than a single season.

For Tottenham, the appeal is the version of Savinho that lit up La Liga rather than the one who flickered in Manchester.

It is a significant outlay in a summer transfer window that has already asked hard questions of Spurs' future under Roberto De Zerbi, and it lands on a squad still searching for consistency.

What it means for the multi-club model

Every club watching CFG's accounts will draw the same conclusion. Talent spotted early, parked in a friendly jurisdiction, seasoned on loan and sold at a premium is a repeatable process, not a one-off.

Expect more clubs to build networks that look like it, and expect more scrutiny of the internal transfers that make the numbers work.

Savinho, meanwhile, gets what he has arguably been chasing since 2022: a first-team shirt at a club that has bought him to play, not to develop and trade.

Four years after joining a French club he never turned out for, that is the least the system owes him.