Manuel Ángel and David Jiménez: Waiting for Their Next Steps

Inside Valdebebas, two players keep running, pressing, finishing every drill as if a debut at the Bernabéu were around the corner. It isn’t. Not for them, not anymore.

Manuel Ángel and David Jiménez know their future lies away from Real Madrid. The boots are still laced in “La Fábrica”, but their next steps will be taken somewhere else in Spain’s top two divisions or across Europe, where interest is already strong. For now, they wait. The offers are coming.

The club knows it too. Both have been left out of Castilla’s friendlies and official matches, a deliberate move to avoid any injury that could derail a decisive transfer, according to Spanish outlet AS. They are training like starters and living like outgoing assets.

All in the middle of a record-breaking summer.

A mastermind ready to leave the lab

Manuel Ángel has been on the edge of the exit door before. Last summer, Levante pushed hardest, Aston Villa also tried to take him to England, and yet he chose to stay, to give Real Madrid one more year.

He made it count. He wore the captain’s armband under Álvaro Arbeloa and then López de Lerma, and he closed the season edging closer to the first team. Seven appearances, 129 minutes. Not a huge sample, but enough to show that his rhythm, vision and personality belong at a higher level than the third tier.

Now 22, 1.70m tall and a Real Madrid player since 2014, he stands out as one of the leaders of that famous treble-winning generation under Arbeloa – the same crop that produced Nico Paz, Gonzalo, Palacios and Jacobo Ramón. Arbeloa once defined him as “a player who completely changes the course of a match”. Inside the academy, that line stuck because it fit.

He does it with his head more than his frame. Small in stature, he rules the middle of the pitch with intelligence and a rare ambidexterity. He hits free kicks with his right and his left, to the point that people at the club joke that “even he himself does not know whether he is right-footed or left-footed”.

Twelve years after walking into Valdebebas, the waiting is almost over. The interest that has surrounded him for months is expected to harden into concrete bids. The next phase of his career is no longer a theory on a scouting report. It is about to be signed.

Arbeloa’s right-hand man steps out

From the brain of the midfield to the whip of the flank: David Jiménez, part of the same golden generation, has been terrorising touchlines rather than half-spaces.

In that treble season, the right-back came close to 20 assists. Numbers that would turn heads for a winger, let alone a defender. At Valdebebas, they call him Arbeloa’s right-hand man on the pitch and speak of “the best right foot in the academy”.

He is the prototype of the modern attacking full-back. Constantly high, constantly dangerous, a set-piece specialist and calm on the ball like a seasoned midfielder. Inside the academy they describe him in one breath: “He surges forward with all his might, he has the personality of a leader and the touch of Carvajal.”

The character matches the game. Strong, intense, convinced of his own path, he mirrors the man who was once his idol and later one of his biggest supporters: Arbeloa.

Born in 2004, in the academy since 2013, the 1.70m defender closed last season with 153 minutes for the first team, 91 of those under Xabi Alonso. A small window, but enough to leave a mark on the staff. The feeling inside the club is clear: he has the experience and the maturity to leave the Real Madrid bubble and hold his own elsewhere. All he needs now is the right spark to light up that next chapter. Few doubt it will arrive.

A factory that prints talent – and money

While Manuel Ángel and Jiménez wait for their moves, the numbers tell another story: this is a historic summer for Real Madrid’s academy.

Revenues from youth sales have already reached a record 199 million euros. Once the departures of Manuel Ángel and Jiménez are completed, the total will burst through the 200 million barrier. The 10 million euros from the Jacobo Ortega deal have already nudged the figure past 199 million.

Inside Valdebebas, many predicted it. They spoke of a “historic summer” as offers started to pile up. Now that forecast is unfolding in real time, with the club not only cashing in but also keeping percentages of future sales for several players, ensuring the conveyor belt pays out more than once.

The list of exits underlines the scale of the operation:

• Nico Paz (60 million euros)
• Gonzalo (40 million)
• Víctor Muñoz (20.5 million)
• Gila (15 million)
• Álvaro Rodríguez (12.5 million)
• Álex Jiménez (12.5 million)
• Palacios (10 million)
• Jacobo Ortega (10 million)
• Fran García (4 million)
• Mario Martín (3 million)
• Fran González (3 million)

On top of that, there is serious interest in Sisteró, Yáñez and Juan Martínez.

La Fábrica is doing exactly what its nickname suggests: producing, refining, exporting. The first team keeps the absolute elite. The rest are turning into a revenue stream that would make many European clubs jealous.

For Manuel Ángel and David Jiménez, that means something simple and brutal: the badge they grew up dreaming about is about to become part of their past, not their future. The question now is not whether they will leave, but where they will land – and how quickly they can prove that Real Madrid’s latest sales are not just good business, but stars in the making.