Career Advice and Transfers
The Economist and The Athletic are two digital publications I try to read daily. Each week, I'll share two articles that caught my attention; one from each publication.
This week: career advice for Gen Z and an example of Real Madrid's evolving transfer strategy.
Why traditional career advice is failing Gen Z
The traditional advice is “follow your passions.” But the author of 80,000 Hours Ben Todd suggests “Get good at something that helps others, and passion will follow”. The conundrum the piece sets out is what if you follow a passion but end up being pretty average.
My counter perspective, and something I mention in Build The Invisible, is you can get good by following your passions because you’re willing to go the extra mile (passion literally means “to suffer”). If you’re able to suffer, i.e., go beyond what most are willing to endure and do that consistently, then it’s less likely you’ll end up average because your knowledge acquisition will be deeper, and more consistent over a longer period of time. You’ll also more likely have interesting things to say to people, which in my experience, is of value when connecting, networking and building relationships.
Why didn’t Real Madrid want Victor Munoz for €8m, when Liverpool paid €40m?
When Madrid sold Munoz to Osasuna for €5m last summer, they inserted, among other clauses, an €8m buy-back for the 2026 summer window and a 50% sell on. Liverpool then bid €40m for the player. The sell-on revenue, which is usually based on the transfer profit, would have been in the €17m-€18m range. Madrid receiving in total, in the region of €23m for a player they only recently sold for €5m would be seen as impressive transfer negotiations.
Even though Madrid could have bought the player back at significantly below market value, the club appears to have decided on scaling this high sell-on clause approach by combining it with a low initial sale transfer fee. Fabrizio Romano recently reported that the club, by using such an approach, has generated over €100m in transfer revenue for players that did not even play for the club last season.