Inside the Benfica Campus, one of the world's greatest football talent factories

By Matias Grez and Jack Bantock, CNN

Updated 0934 GMT (1734 HKT) July 15, 2022

Benfica players celebrate after winning the UEFA Youth League last season.

(CNN)In the past three seasons, Portuguese giant Benfica has generated more than $200 million from the sale of just two players that came through the club's academy: João Félix and Rúben Dias.

Over the years, the club's academy — known as the Benfica Campus — has nurtured numerous stars that have gone on to command high transfer fees from Europe's biggest clubs; Ederson, Renato Sanches, Gonçalo Guedes, Félix and Dias to name just a few.Rodrigo Magalhães is the technical coordinator for the Campus and has been working in youth development at the club since 2005. He tells CNN Sport that Benfica's focus on developing its youth stars as human beings before footballers is key to its success.Around 95 players live at the academy at any one time, and when they transition from the under-18s to the under-19s, players move out into their own houses or apartments in the city.«In our opinion, it was the age that they start to have their own lives,» Magalhães says to CNN. «Some of them have girlfriends, some of them live two or three in an apartment. So they start a life outside the academy as we need to prepare them to live their lives because we know that a small percentage of players will achieve the goal to play in the first team or in the main leagues in Europe. Read More»After those ages, under-19 and under-23, normally all of our players who progress [from the academy] can play in first divisions and second divisions here in Portugal or in other countries, but we need to prepare them if football fails. «The first objective was to develop them like human beings and we need to