Breaking into the major markets

With a data-driven recruitment strategy, Mexican club Atlético de San Luis are open-minded in terms of where they recruit players from and they are searching for new signings all over the world.

Nationalities do not matter, so their recruitment department, led by Sporting Director Iñigo Regueiro, scours all top markets across the globe looking for good-value players, but having direct access to decision makers and getting first-hand reliable information is much harder to find.

It has previously left them and other clubs in Liga MX typically relying on intermediaries and existing contacts to get business done, meaning they had a limited network and a lack of reliable transfer market information.

But the long-term, league-wide agreement between Liga MX and TransferRoom has given the likes of San Luis direct access to world football’s digital marketplace, meaning they can now do business directly with decision makers from more than 700 clubs and 100 leagues, including Europe’s big five.

Transfer business can be conducted with any club in any league at the click of a button,  making distances irrelevant and the world a smaller place.

For Atlético de San Luis, it meant signing two senior players from two of world football’s biggest leagues - the Premier League and Bundesliga - in one Window, as Chief Scout Rodrigo Palacios explains in the video below.

The transfer of Léo Bonatini from Wolverhampton Wanderers stemmed from a meeting with his TransferRoom Trusted Agents, Brazil’s TFM Agency, at the TransferRoom Summit in Orlando, USA.

And real-time club and player requirements, including financial expectations and market data, meant San Luis had all the information they needed when they were alerted to the availability of VfB Stuttgart’s attacking midfielder Mateo Klimowicz through the platform.

The club quickly declared interest in the Argentina-born Germany youth international, and a short-term deal was eventually agreed.

Such was his impact, a permanent transfer followed for Klimowicz in the January 2024 Transfer Window.

Striking the perfect deals

"The transparency that TransferRoom brings, it's one of the key elements of the platform,” Palacios says.

“Both deals went pretty well from start to finish. It was a good relationship with the clubs. Wolves were really good about Bonatini, because Leo still had six months left on his contract. But they were really willing to let the player come here, and he wanted to so much.

“We always had a good relationship with them, and the agents of Bonatini and Mateo are professional, by the book.

“I'd almost say it was the perfect deal, in the sense that it never had bad moments when you think it's not going well.  It was two months of negotiations and talking, but always in a good manner.

“I think deals in South America get shady sometimes. This was not the case in any of those. In terms of commission, it was pretty standard, by the market. It was a good deal.”

TransferRoom helping form European strategy

Signing international talents from major European leagues is part of the wider transfer strategy at San Luis, a club 50%-owned by Spanish giants Atlético de Madrid.

Palacios is hoping that their global connections and the trust they are building with their transfer dealings will lead to more business with high-profile sides on a consistent basis.

“We've got to make the difference and we've got to compete with other teams in the league, by doing things differently and by thinking differently, because our budget is very different to the budget of other teams in Liga MX,” he adds. “So we are pretty open to all the markets in the world.

“That's definitely the strategy, that higher teams in the Premier League, Bundesliga, Spain and Italy know that we're willing to make those deals and know the players are coming to a good league.

“Hopefully we will make deals with those guys in the future, internally and in Liga MX. So they know that the internal market of Liga MX is really huge.”