The following is a list of most expensive association football transfers, which details the highest
transfer fees ever paid for
players, as well as transfers which set new world transfer records. The first confirmed record transfer was of
Willie Groves from
West Bromwich Albion to
Aston Villa for £100 in 1893[1] (equivalent to £12,000 in 2021). This occurred just eight years after the introduction of professionalism by the
Football Association in 1885.[2] The current transfer record was set by the transfer of
Neymar from
Barcelona to
Paris Saint-Germain for €222 million (£200 million) in August 2017.[3][4]
Highest transfer payments in association football
Most of the transfers on this list are to clubs under
UEFA's jurisdiction, with most of the purchasing clubs being from England, Italy, and Spain.
The first player to ever be transferred for a fee of over £100 was Scottish
strikerWillie Groves when he together with
Jack Reynolds (£50) made the switch from
West Bromwich Albion to
Aston Villa in 1893,[2] eight years after the legalisation of professionalism in the sport. It took just another twelve years for the figure to become £1000, when
Sunderland striker
Alf Common moved to
Middlesbrough.[68][69] It was not 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.[70][71] 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.[69]
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,[71] 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
Barcelona to
Inter Milan for £152k, becoming the first ever player sold for more than £100k.[69] In 1968,
Pietro Anastasi became the first £500k player when
Juventus purchased him from
Varese,[71] which was followed seven years later with
Giuseppe Savoldi becoming the first million pound player when he transferred from
Bologna to
Napoli.[69][71]
After
Alf Common and David Jack, the third player to twice be transferred for world record fees is
Diego Maradona.[69][71] His transfers from
Boca Juniors to Barcelona for £3m, and then to Napoli for £5m, both broke the record in 1982 and 1984 respectively. In the space of 61 days in 1992,[71] three transfers broke the record,[69] all by Italian clubs:
Jean-Pierre Papin transferred from
Marseille to
A.C. Milan, becoming the first ever £10m player.[71] 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,[73] kickstarted a year-by-year succession of record breaking transfers:
Ronaldo moved
the following year to Inter Milan from Barcelona for a fee of £17m,[74] 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.[69][71][75] In 1999 and 2000, Italian clubs returned to their record-breaking ways, with
Christian Vieri transferring from
Lazio to Inter Milan for £28m,[76] while
Hernán Crespo's transfer from
Parma to Lazio ensured he became the first player to cost more than £30m.[69][77] The transfer prompted the BBC to ask "has the world gone mad"?[78] It took two weeks for the record to be broken when
Luís Figo made a controversial £37m move from Barcelona to rivals
Real Madrid.[69][79] A year later, Real increased the record again with a signing of
Zinedine Zidane for £48 million (150 billion lire).[80]
Zidane's record stood for 8 years, the longest since the 1940s. Real Madrid continued with the Galácticos policy by buying
Kaká from
Milan for €67 million (£56 million),[81] which was the world record in pound sterling. However, both world record in euro and in pound sterling were broken by Real themselves when signing
Cristiano Ronaldo for £80m (€94m) from
Manchester United in
the same transfer window,[69][82] Four years later Real Madrid broke the record again after completed the signing of
Gareth Bale from
Tottenham Hotspur in 2013. Although Real initially insisted that the transfer cost €91.59 million, slightly less than the Ronaldo fee, the deal was widely reported to be around €100 million (around £85.1 million).[83][84] Documents leaked in 2016 by
Football Leaks revealed that instalments brought the final Bale fee up to a total of €100,759,418.[69][85] In 2016, Manchester United eventually took the record away from Real Madrid, signing French midfielder
Paul Pogba for €105 million (£89 million),[86] four years after having released him to Juventus for
training compensation.
A year after the Pogba transfer, however, there was a major jump in the record fee.
Paris Saint-Germain matched the €222 million buyout fee of Barcelona's
Neymar, converted to a reported £198 million by different sources,[4] or £200 million[3] more than double the previous record. This was the first time that the record fee was paid by a French club.
While players are often purchased for high fees, the fee to release a manager from their contract is a lot less.[111][112][113] Usually described as a "compensation fee", the amount paid to the manager's current club is based around several factors including the total salary for the current length of his contract, as well as potential bonuses and sponsorship deals, and additional fees if the club also need to pay compensation to hire a new manager.[111]
^Initial £105 million plus reported £37 million bonuses
^Initial £100 million plus reported £5 million bonuses
^Initial £100 million plus reported £15 million bonuses
^Initial €105 million plus reported €40 million bonuses
^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial €105 million, plus another €5 million in additional bonuses; Pogba's agent
Mino Raiola also received a reported €27 million from Juventus, from a portion of aforementioned transfer fee from Manchester United.
^Initial €103 million plus reported €30.9 million bonuses
^Initial £89 million plus reported £60 million bonuses
^Initial €100 million plus reported €10 million bonuses
^Initial €95 million plus reported €5 million bonuses
^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial £75 million, plus another £15 million in additional bonuses.
^
abc€700,000 release clause, €35,000 (5%) training fee applicable, and $75,000 (€70,000) additional variables.
^
ab€450,000 fixed and €50,000 variables that Levante expected to be met: one clause was that Ramírez must appear in 30% of games over her four-and-a-half year contract.[155] The potential total was reported in The Athletic to be equivalent to £460,000,[156] while it was described in
Press Association reports as £384,000 and £42,000 in add-ons (£426,000).[157] The fee was considered to be meeting Ramírez'
release clause; Spanish media reported prior to the signing that it was expected to be slightly below or equal to the previous record,[158] with English media focusing on how it exceeded the previous record purchase by Chelsea (a former world record)[159][160] and would be a British record.[161] Levante announced details of the fee at the same time as the transfer.[155]
^
abcIncluding bonuses up to €70,000 / £61,000. Initial fee of €400,000 / £348,000 would be a record in itself.[162]Forbes reported a fee of €500,000,[163] also describing Walsh as women's football's "first $500,000 player".[164] The approximately £400,000 figure is most consistently reported and accepted.[165][162]
^Fee was player's release clause; it was triggered in February 2024 for Oberdorf to transfer at the end of the season (June 2024).
^Reported to be a club signing fee for Manchester City, and by
Sky Sports to be a British record fee, it was announced as "in excess of £300,000".
^
abcGlendenning, Barry; Murray, Scott; Bagchi, Rob; Steinberg, Jacob (30 August 2013).
"The Joy of Six: record transfers". The Guardian.
Archived from the original on 2 August 2017. Retrieved 2 August 2017.
^"Football player's transfer. Extraordinary terms". Staffordshire Sentinel. 30 June 1896. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com. The Aston Villa had decided to give them £100 cash down and to play Small Heath a match on September 1st, probably at Perry Barr. They had guaranteed no less a sum that £250 from this, and Small Heath were also to have half any amount taken in excess of the guarantee. This would mean a gain to Small Heath of about £500. Wheldon was having £150 a year, and he (the chairman) understood his wages with Aston Villa would be considerably in advance of that amount.
^"Daily Express". Record Transfer Fee. 17 October 1903.
^Simkin, John (September 1997).
"Alf Common". Spartacus Educational.
Archived from the original on 8 October 2018. Retrieved 8 October 2018.
^Jo Bath, Richard F Stevenson. (2013). "The Newcastle Book of Days". p. 31. The History Press
^Zeigler, Martyn; Toddy, Tom; Jacob, Gary;
Lawton, Matt (9 September 2022). "Graham Potter: Chelsea paid record £22m fee to prise head coach from Brighton". The Times. Retrieved 26 October 2022. The compensation cost to Chelsea is understood to be £20 million for their new head coach Potter and a further £2 million for the five-strong backroom team that have gone with him.
The following is a list of most expensive association football transfers, which details the highest
transfer fees ever paid for
players, as well as transfers which set new world transfer records. The first confirmed record transfer was of
Willie Groves from
West Bromwich Albion to
Aston Villa for £100 in 1893[1] (equivalent to £12,000 in 2021). This occurred just eight years after the introduction of professionalism by the
Football Association in 1885.[2] The current transfer record was set by the transfer of
Neymar from
Barcelona to
Paris Saint-Germain for €222 million (£200 million) in August 2017.[3][4]
Highest transfer payments in association football
Most of the transfers on this list are to clubs under
UEFA's jurisdiction, with most of the purchasing clubs being from England, Italy, and Spain.
The first player to ever be transferred for a fee of over £100 was Scottish
strikerWillie Groves when he together with
Jack Reynolds (£50) made the switch from
West Bromwich Albion to
Aston Villa in 1893,[2] eight years after the legalisation of professionalism in the sport. It took just another twelve years for the figure to become £1000, when
Sunderland striker
Alf Common moved to
Middlesbrough.[68][69] It was not 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.[70][71] 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.[69]
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,[71] 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
Barcelona to
Inter Milan for £152k, becoming the first ever player sold for more than £100k.[69] In 1968,
Pietro Anastasi became the first £500k player when
Juventus purchased him from
Varese,[71] which was followed seven years later with
Giuseppe Savoldi becoming the first million pound player when he transferred from
Bologna to
Napoli.[69][71]
After
Alf Common and David Jack, the third player to twice be transferred for world record fees is
Diego Maradona.[69][71] His transfers from
Boca Juniors to Barcelona for £3m, and then to Napoli for £5m, both broke the record in 1982 and 1984 respectively. In the space of 61 days in 1992,[71] three transfers broke the record,[69] all by Italian clubs:
Jean-Pierre Papin transferred from
Marseille to
A.C. Milan, becoming the first ever £10m player.[71] 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,[73] kickstarted a year-by-year succession of record breaking transfers:
Ronaldo moved
the following year to Inter Milan from Barcelona for a fee of £17m,[74] 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.[69][71][75] In 1999 and 2000, Italian clubs returned to their record-breaking ways, with
Christian Vieri transferring from
Lazio to Inter Milan for £28m,[76] while
Hernán Crespo's transfer from
Parma to Lazio ensured he became the first player to cost more than £30m.[69][77] The transfer prompted the BBC to ask "has the world gone mad"?[78] It took two weeks for the record to be broken when
Luís Figo made a controversial £37m move from Barcelona to rivals
Real Madrid.[69][79] A year later, Real increased the record again with a signing of
Zinedine Zidane for £48 million (150 billion lire).[80]
Zidane's record stood for 8 years, the longest since the 1940s. Real Madrid continued with the Galácticos policy by buying
Kaká from
Milan for €67 million (£56 million),[81] which was the world record in pound sterling. However, both world record in euro and in pound sterling were broken by Real themselves when signing
Cristiano Ronaldo for £80m (€94m) from
Manchester United in
the same transfer window,[69][82] Four years later Real Madrid broke the record again after completed the signing of
Gareth Bale from
Tottenham Hotspur in 2013. Although Real initially insisted that the transfer cost €91.59 million, slightly less than the Ronaldo fee, the deal was widely reported to be around €100 million (around £85.1 million).[83][84] Documents leaked in 2016 by
Football Leaks revealed that instalments brought the final Bale fee up to a total of €100,759,418.[69][85] In 2016, Manchester United eventually took the record away from Real Madrid, signing French midfielder
Paul Pogba for €105 million (£89 million),[86] four years after having released him to Juventus for
training compensation.
A year after the Pogba transfer, however, there was a major jump in the record fee.
Paris Saint-Germain matched the €222 million buyout fee of Barcelona's
Neymar, converted to a reported £198 million by different sources,[4] or £200 million[3] more than double the previous record. This was the first time that the record fee was paid by a French club.
While players are often purchased for high fees, the fee to release a manager from their contract is a lot less.[111][112][113] Usually described as a "compensation fee", the amount paid to the manager's current club is based around several factors including the total salary for the current length of his contract, as well as potential bonuses and sponsorship deals, and additional fees if the club also need to pay compensation to hire a new manager.[111]
^Initial £105 million plus reported £37 million bonuses
^Initial £100 million plus reported £5 million bonuses
^Initial £100 million plus reported £15 million bonuses
^Initial €105 million plus reported €40 million bonuses
^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial €105 million, plus another €5 million in additional bonuses; Pogba's agent
Mino Raiola also received a reported €27 million from Juventus, from a portion of aforementioned transfer fee from Manchester United.
^Initial €103 million plus reported €30.9 million bonuses
^Initial £89 million plus reported £60 million bonuses
^Initial €100 million plus reported €10 million bonuses
^Initial €95 million plus reported €5 million bonuses
^Fee was to be paid over time with an initial £75 million, plus another £15 million in additional bonuses.
^
abc€700,000 release clause, €35,000 (5%) training fee applicable, and $75,000 (€70,000) additional variables.
^
ab€450,000 fixed and €50,000 variables that Levante expected to be met: one clause was that Ramírez must appear in 30% of games over her four-and-a-half year contract.[155] The potential total was reported in The Athletic to be equivalent to £460,000,[156] while it was described in
Press Association reports as £384,000 and £42,000 in add-ons (£426,000).[157] The fee was considered to be meeting Ramírez'
release clause; Spanish media reported prior to the signing that it was expected to be slightly below or equal to the previous record,[158] with English media focusing on how it exceeded the previous record purchase by Chelsea (a former world record)[159][160] and would be a British record.[161] Levante announced details of the fee at the same time as the transfer.[155]
^
abcIncluding bonuses up to €70,000 / £61,000. Initial fee of €400,000 / £348,000 would be a record in itself.[162]Forbes reported a fee of €500,000,[163] also describing Walsh as women's football's "first $500,000 player".[164] The approximately £400,000 figure is most consistently reported and accepted.[165][162]
^Fee was player's release clause; it was triggered in February 2024 for Oberdorf to transfer at the end of the season (June 2024).
^Reported to be a club signing fee for Manchester City, and by
Sky Sports to be a British record fee, it was announced as "in excess of £300,000".
^
abcGlendenning, Barry; Murray, Scott; Bagchi, Rob; Steinberg, Jacob (30 August 2013).
"The Joy of Six: record transfers". The Guardian.
Archived from the original on 2 August 2017. Retrieved 2 August 2017.
^"Football player's transfer. Extraordinary terms". Staffordshire Sentinel. 30 June 1896. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com. The Aston Villa had decided to give them £100 cash down and to play Small Heath a match on September 1st, probably at Perry Barr. They had guaranteed no less a sum that £250 from this, and Small Heath were also to have half any amount taken in excess of the guarantee. This would mean a gain to Small Heath of about £500. Wheldon was having £150 a year, and he (the chairman) understood his wages with Aston Villa would be considerably in advance of that amount.
^"Daily Express". Record Transfer Fee. 17 October 1903.
^Simkin, John (September 1997).
"Alf Common". Spartacus Educational.
Archived from the original on 8 October 2018. Retrieved 8 October 2018.
^Jo Bath, Richard F Stevenson. (2013). "The Newcastle Book of Days". p. 31. The History Press
^Zeigler, Martyn; Toddy, Tom; Jacob, Gary;
Lawton, Matt (9 September 2022). "Graham Potter: Chelsea paid record £22m fee to prise head coach from Brighton". The Times. Retrieved 26 October 2022. The compensation cost to Chelsea is understood to be £20 million for their new head coach Potter and a further £2 million for the five-strong backroom team that have gone with him.