The following is a list of most expensive football association transfers, which details the highest transfer fees ever paid for players as of the summer transfer window of 2017.
As well as the most expensive transfers of all time, the page also lists transfers which broke the world transfer record. The first recorded record transfer was of Willie Groves from West Bromwich Albion to Aston Villa for a sum of £100 in 1893. This occurred just eight years after the introduction of professionalism by The FA in 1885. The current transfer record was set by the transfer of Neymar from FC Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain for the sum of EUR222 million (£200 million) in August 2017.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Highest fees
Most of the highest-value transfers on this list are to clubs under UEFA's jurisdiction, and most involve clubs in the Eurozone and/or the United Kingdom. The default order in this table is based on the transfer amount in euros. Due to exchange rate fluctuations the order is different in pound sterling, which are also shown in the table. Transfers that took place before the adoption of the euro are given in their approximate euro equivalent. The list includes only the top fifty disclosed transfer fees.
Three players appear on the list twice: Neymar, James Rodríguez and Ángel Di María. All of the players on the list are of either European (UEFA) or South American (CONMEBOL) origin. There are no players from the remaining regions, namely Africa (CAF), Asia (AFC), North America (CONCACAF) and Oceania (OFC).
As of 3 August 2017; during the 2017 summer transfer window.
Notes
Football Signings Video
World football transfer record
The first player to ever be transferred for a fee of over £100 was Scottish striker Willie Groves when he together with Jack Reynolds (£50) made the switch from West Bromwich Albion to Aston Villa in 1893, eight years after the legalisation of professionalism in the sport. It took just twelve years for the figure to become £1000, when Sunderland striker Alf Common moved to Middlesbrough.
It wasn't until 1928 that the first five-figure transfer took place. David Jack of Bolton Wanderers was the subject of interest from Arsenal, and in order to negotiate the fee down, Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman got the Bolton representatives drunk. Subsequently, David Jack was transferred for a world record fee when Arsenal paid £10,890 to Bolton for his services, after Bolton had asked for £13,000, which was double the previous record made when Sunderland signed Burnley's Bob Kelly a fee of for £6,500.
The first player from outside Great Britain to break the record was Bernabé Ferreyra, a player known as La Fiera for his powerful shot. His 1932 transfer from Tigre to River Plate cost £23k, and the record would last for 17 years (the longest the record has lasted) until it was broken by Manchester United's sale of Johnny Morris to Derby County for £24k in March 1949. The record was broken seven further times between 1949 and 1961, when Luis Suárez Miramontes was sold by FC Barcelona to Inter Milan for £152k, becoming the first ever player sold for more than £100k.
In 1968, Pietro Anastasi became the first £500k player when Juventus purchased him from Varese, which was followed seven years later with Giuseppe Savoldi becoming the first million pound player when he transferred from Bologna to Napoli.
The second player to twice be transferred for world record fees is Diego Maradona. His transfers from Boca Juniors to Barcelona for £3m, and then to Napoli for £5m, both broke the record in 1982 and 1984 respectively. The third became Ronaldo with his record-breaking move from PSV Eindhoven to Barcelona in 1996 for £13.2m, although Alan Shearer's transfer to Newcastle broke the record the same summer. A year later Inter Milan paid £19.5m for Ronaldo and again he became the player with the highest transfer fee.
In the space of 61 days in 1992, three transfers broke the record, all by Italian clubs: Jean-Pierre Papin transferred from Marseille to A.C. Milan, becoming the first ever £10m player. Almost immediately, rivals Juventus topped that with the signing of Gianluca Vialli for a fee of £12m from Sampdoria. Milan then completed the signing of Gianluigi Lentini for a fee of £13m which stood as the record for three years.
The 1996 transfer of Alan Shearer from Blackburn Rovers to Newcastle United, for a fee of £15m, kickstarted a year-by-year succession of record breaking transfers: Ronaldo moved the following year to Inter Milan from FC Barcelona for a fee of £17m, which was followed in 1998 by the shock transfer of his fellow countryman Denílson from São Paulo to Real Betis for a fee of approximately £21m.
In 1999 and 2000, Italian clubs returned to their record-breaking ways, with Christian Vieri transferring from Lazio to Inter Milan for £28m, while Hernán Crespo's transfer from Parma to Lazio ensured he became the first player to cost more than £30m. The transfer prompted the BBC to ask "has the world gone mad"? It took two weeks for the record to be broken when Luís Figo made a controversial £37m move from Barcelona to rivals Real Madrid. A year later, Real increased the record again with a singing of Zinedine Zidane for £48million.
Zdiane's record stood for 8 years, the longest since the 1940s. Madrid broke their own record when signing Cristiano Ronaldo for £80m (EUR94m)from Manchester United in 2009, before signing Gareth Bale from Tottenham Hotspur in 2013. Although Real initially insisted that the transfer cost EUR91.59 million, slightly less than the Ronaldo fee, the deal was widely reported to be around EUR100million (around £85.1million). Documents released in 2013 revealed that installments brought the final Bale fee up to a total of EUR100,759,418. In 2016, Manchester United eventually took the record away from Real Madrid, signing French striker Paul Pogba for EUR105million (£89million), four years after having sold him for £1.5million to Juventus.
A year after the Pogba transfer, however, there was a major jump in the the record fee. Paris St. Germain matched the EUR222million buyout fee of Barcelona's Neymar, converted to a reported £198million or £200million by different sources. This was the first time that the record fee was paid by a French club.
Historical progression
Comparison of fees in different nations is complicated by varying exchange rates. This table uses British Pound Sterling prior to 1999 and Euro for transfers since then.
Number of records by country
Source of the article : Wikipedia
EmoticonEmoticon