What have Atlético actually hired Mateu Alemany to do?

Hired a month before the Apollo announcement

On 7 October 2025, Atlético de Madrid appointed Mateu Alemany as director of men's professional football. He sits inside the football department run by Carlos Bucero, and his brief covers the first team, Atlético Madrileño and the professional end of the academy. His contract is reported to run for 18 months.

A month later, on 10 November, the club announced that Apollo Sports Capital would become its majority shareholder. The size of the stake was never published: 55 per cent according to some reports, 57 per cent according to others. The valuation of around €2.5bn is a reported figure too. The deal closed on 12 March 2026. In terms of official announcements the appointment came first, though talks with Apollo had already been reported in September.

Alemany put it this way when he arrived. "When I left Barça I was clear that my next step had to be a big club, one that could compete for everything. When the Atlético possibility came up, I had no doubts at all."

What I want to know is what the club has actually asked him to do. The job title does not tell you much. His career does. He has been doing the same kind of work at four clubs since the early 1990s, and going through them in order shows what Atlético were looking for.

Mallorca ran on selling its best players

His method is clearest across his two spells at Mallorca. Alemany joined in the early 1990s, worked his way up from the back office to chief executive, and became president in 2000. Antonio Asensio, who controlled the club at the time, is said to have promoted him to keep him away from Florentino Pérez's Real Madrid.

Samuel Eto'o is the case that shows it best. The story is usually shortened to "Mallorca sold Eto'o for a fortune", and that is not quite what happened.

Eto'o belonged to Real Madrid. Mallorca first took him on loan in the second half of 1999-2000, then paid 1.2bn pesetas, around €7.2m at the time, to take his registration in June 2001. Madrid kept a share of whatever he was sold for later; the figure was reported as 40 per cent then and 50 per cent afterwards, and it has never been clear. Mallorca could pick him every week, but they were never going to bank the full fee when he moved on. Over five seasons Eto'o played 133 league games, scored 54 goals and set the club's La Liga record. He scored twice in the 2003 Copa del Rey final against Recreativo to win Mallorca their first Copa. Having finished third in La Liga, they were in the Champions League in 2001-02: third place meant entering the qualifying rounds back then, and Mallorca knocked out Hajduk Split to reach the group stage, where they were drawn with Arsenal.

On 11 August 2004 Eto'o joined Barcelona for €24m, split evenly between Madrid and Mallorca at €12m each. Mallorca had paid €7.2m three years earlier, so on the numbers alone this was a deal that cleared about €5m.

What Mallorca got out of those five seasons was not only the margin. Eto'o's goals won them a Copa and took them into the Champions League. Diego Tristán went to Deportivo in August 2000, Albert Luque followed to the same club for around €15m in August 2002. That was how Mallorca kept going.

That said, being good at deals does not keep a club safe. Alemany stepped away in 2005 and the debt built up under the boards that followed. By the time he was brought back in 2009 it was too late, and Mallorca went into administration in 2010. He sold his shareholding and left that June.

At a wealthy Valencia he was just another buyer

In March 2017 Alemany became general director at Valencia. If you want to call him a man who is good at selling, these two and a half years are the awkward part.

At Valencia he bought. Gonçalo Guedes for €40m, Geoffrey Kondogbia for €22m, Kevin Gameiro for €14m. All reported figures, but the scale is clear enough. Peter Lim's money was there and Alemany spent it. He hired Marcelino García Toral, finished fourth in his first season to bring the club back into the Champions League, and beat Barcelona 2-1 in the 2019 Copa del Rey final.

The results were there. Even so, I could not find a deal from those two and a half years that only Alemany could have done. What comes across is a capable executive with money behind him, and not much more than that.

The ending is the part that repeats later in his career. In the summer of 2019, a €60m move that would have taken Rodrigo to Atlético was reportedly agreed directly between Lim and Miguel Ángel Gil Marín, over the heads of the general director and the head coach. The transfer never happened, because Atlético could not shift Ángel Correa first and had nowhere to put him. The row over who controlled recruitment was never repaired. Marcelino was sacked in September and Alemany was dismissed on 7 November, weeks after winning a Copa and getting the club back into the Champions League.

He got Lewandowski into a club that could not register players

Alemany became director of professional football at Barcelona in March 2021. The club could barely register the players it signed. Lionel Messi left that August. After the money at Valencia this was the opposite kind of job, and it is where his work becomes easy to see.

In the summer of 2022 Barcelona sold off slices of future television and licensing income to create room, and signed Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha and Jules Koundé. Selling future revenue up front is what Barcelona called a palanca, Spanish for a lever. It was not his doing alone: selling future income needed board and members' approval, and the decision sat with the club's institutions. Turning that room into actual signings was his department's job. By Mundo Deportivo's count, the deals around players leaving during his three seasons brought in about €220m, roughly what Barcelona received when Neymar went to Paris in 2017.

Atlético supporters will remember him from the other side of the table in this period. Antoine Griezmann came back on loan from Barcelona in the summer of 2021, on a deal that obliged Atlético to buy him for €40m once he had played a set amount of football. The two clubs fell out over how to read that clause. Griezmann spent much of 2022-23 coming on in the second half, and how the appearances were counted became the whole argument. The fee eventually came down to €20m plus up to €4m in add-ons. Alemany was the man opposite Gil Marín in that negotiation.

In May 2023 he was linked with Aston Villa. He stayed, but Deco was appointed sporting director, authority moved with him, and Alemany left Barcelona on 2 September that year.

Seven signings in ten months, four of them starters

His ten months at Atlético show the same touch as Mallorca and Barcelona. Start with what he inherited. Atlético signed ten players in the summer of 2025, after Andrea Berta had gone. Transfermarkt's figures at the close of that window put the outlay at around €176m against €68m recovered in sales. The season ended with fourth place in La Liga, a Champions League semi-final and defeat in the Copa del Rey final.

His first move was not to buy. In January 2026 Conor Gallagher went to Tottenham for €40m and Giacomo Raspadori to Atalanta for €22m plus add-ons, six months after Atlético had paid Napoli much the same amount for him. Javi Galán left for Osasuna, and Rodrigo De Paul's permanent move to Inter Miami was completed that January as well. Transfermarkt make the €77.5m Atlético took in that winter the highest a La Liga club has ever received in a January window.

The buying came afterwards. On 2 February, the day the window shut, Atlético announced Ademola Lookman, Obed Vargas and Rodrigo Mendoza together once the medicals were done. The winter outlay was €54m, €35m of it for Lookman. Sold for €77.5m, bought for €54m: the window closed €23.5m in profit. Closing business in the final hours is something Spanish reporters regularly attach to his name.

Four players arrived the following summer: Alejandro Grimaldo on 30 June, Morten Hjulmand on 11 July, Kang-in Lee in July and Cristian Romero on 15 August. The contracts are all long ones, Grimaldo's to June 2030 and the other three to June 2031.

Only one fee has been made public. Sporting SAD's filing to the Portuguese securities commission puts Hjulmand at €40m fixed with up to €5m in performance add-ons. The club has said nothing about the other three. The reported fixed fees are €35m for Lee, €15m for Grimaldo and somewhere between €33m and €35m for Romero, and if every add-on were triggered the four would come to around €148m.

Line up the players who left and you can see how he draws the line. Even a recent signing goes while there is still a price on him. Matteo Ruggeri, Thiago Almada and, in the winter, Raspadori had all arrived in the summer of 2025. Ruggeri had made the left-back spot his own before he went to Aston Villa. The reported fees vary: Marca had €18m fixed plus €6m in add-ons, others put the fixed fee at €25m or the total at €30m. Either way it is more than the €17m Atlético paid a year earlier.

Almada is more tangled. What Atlético bought in the summer of 2025 was 50 per cent of his rights, with the other half staying where he came from. River Plate's move for him, announced on 8 August, was for 100 per cent at €20m, and Atlético's share of that is reported as the €10m matching what they held. They had paid a reported €21m to sign him and got €10m back. That one they did not recover. Nahuel Molina, after four years at the club, went to Roma for €13m fixed and up to €19m with add-ons. Griezmann moved to Orlando City under the agreement announced on 24 March, with no fee disclosed.

Add up the reported fixed fees and the summer cost €123m to €125m, with somewhere between €40m and €48m coming back depending on which Ruggeri figure you take. The winter was €54m out and €77.5m in. Add-ons and undisclosed terms mean none of this is exact, but on the reported fixed fees Atlético have signed seven players in his ten months for a net outlay of €52m to €61m. Four starters changed in that time, and Lookman came in up front.

I am satisfied with this summer's four, on price and on substance. A 27-year-old holding midfielder who captained his club, a centre-back who won the World Cup in 2022, a left-back who won the Bundesliga at Leverkusen. Set against what they do, none of those figures is excessive. At the same time he has moved on the players his predecessor gathered inside a year, one after another: Raspadori for what was paid for him, Ruggeri for more, Almada at a loss he chose to take. The fact that the club spent heavily on someone last summer is not treated as a reason to keep him. His strength is not finding players, it is setting the terms of a deal. Not so much who to buy as for how much, when, and on what payment structure to let go. Taking Eto'o's registration while accepting a split of whatever he sold for, and turning Barcelona's borrowed room into actual signings, are the same job.

What's missing sits behind the first XI

Griezmann played 56 matches in 2025-26, 29 of them from the start and 27 off the bench, with 14 goals and eight assists. He was a player you could use either way and count on in both. Lose someone like that and the goals are not the first thing you feel; the squad simply becomes harder to rotate across a season.

The full-backs are the more serious problem. Javi Galán, Matteo Ruggeri and Nahuel Molina have all left in these ten months and Grimaldo is the only full-back to arrive. The starting quality has gone up, but the number of players you can turn to when someone is missing has gone down. That bites in the weeks when injuries and suspensions land together.

There is one more thing about how this squad has been put together. Grimaldo was born in 1995 and Romero in 1998, and both have contracts running to 2030 and 2031. They will still have years left on those deals once they are past their best, and getting money back at that stage is difficult. This is recruitment that took ready-made players over resale value, and it did so consistently.

The last point comes from his career rather than the squad. Alemany's way of working has only functioned where recruitment was genuinely his. He was dismissed at Valencia after falling out with the owner, and he left Barcelona when authority moved to somebody else. Atlético are reported to have given him full control. What happens if that control thins out is not something anyone can say. What can be said is that Valencia produced a fight over who ran recruitment, and that at Barcelona he resigned as the club moved to a new structure.

If the reports are right, his deal runs out in spring 2027

The club has not published the length of his contract. If the reported 18 months is correct, it expires in the spring of 2027. Diego Simeone's contract runs to 30 June 2027, and that much the club has announced. On how any extension will be judged, Miguel Ángel Gil Marín has said he assesses things month by month and season by season. The man handing out contracts to 2031 reaches the end of his own at roughly the same moment as the head coach.

Whether that is coincidence or design is not something we can know. If the 18-month reports are right, a decision on whether he carries on has to be taken by the spring of 2027.

Watch who he sells and what he gets for them, and you will read where this club is heading before any signing is announced.