Is £54.4m for a 29-year-old Hertha Berlin midfielder money well spent?

What does £54.4m buy in the summer of 2063? Ponferrada have decided it buys Götz Rosen, the German midfielder who has left Hertha Berlin for Spain. He is 29. The fee is the largest in the Spanish First Division this summer, and it is being paid by a club that spent much of the last two decades fighting relegation.

Rosen's record at Hertha is not the record of a goalscorer. He made 362 appearances for the club and scored 50 goals. His career totals, across three clubs since 2049/50, are 456 games and 60 goals. For Germany he has played 31 times and scored five. He has won eight trophies at Hertha, and at Ponferrada he will find a club with one major title to its name.

A German international of that standing leaving the Bundesliga is a departure worth noting. Hertha have been among the consistent forces in German football, and they are now managed by Furkan Çiçek, appointed this month. Losing a midfielder of Rosen's experience in the first weeks of a new manager's tenure is not the start Çiçek would have chosen. The money is substantial; the hole is real.

For Ponferrada, the calculation is different. The club from Spain's north-west were relegated in 2042/43, came back in 2048, went down again after a single season, and came back once more in 2049/50 only to be relegated immediately. A third promotion, in 2051/52, finally held. Since then they have turned themselves from perennial relegation candidates into an established La Liga side. Signing Rosen is the next step in that direction, and it is a step taken at a price.

Their supporters know what a big occasion looks like. Hertha have been to Champions League finals in this century and lost them, to Chelsea in 2051/52 and again in 2055/56. Rosen was at Hertha through both of those years. He arrives in Spain with experience of the biggest nights the club game offers, even if the trophies did not follow.

He also arrives as a former Hertha player returning to nothing familiar. There is no old club waiting for him in Spain. What he brings is a career of steady, unglamorous contribution: games played, seasons completed, trophies collected in Berlin. Whether that is worth £54.4m to a club of Ponferrada's means is a question only the league table will answer.

The fee is the sort that demands a return. A 29-year-old midfielder has perhaps three or four seasons at his best. Ponferrada have bought the years that remain, not the years that have gone. That is either good business or expensive sentiment, and the difference will be measured in points.

Hertha, meanwhile, have banked the money and must spend it wisely. German clubs have watched their best players leave before. The ones that prosper are the ones that reinvest well. Çiçek's first task is now the hardest: replacing a man who played 362 games for the club without spending the fee twice over.

Rosen's first season in Spain starts with expectation and a price tag. Ponferrada's supporters will judge him on neither. They will judge him on whether the club stays where it now is, and whether the money was worth it.