Paul Pogba’s proposed transfer to Manchester United has been the talk of the town throughout the 2016 summer transfer window, considering that the Premier League giants allowed him to join Juventus on a free transfer just four years ago.
Despite the player himself telling a group of Juventus fans that he has no intention of leaving the Italian club, the press continue to insist that the deal is going ahead, at an astonishing cost of £108.9 million to his former club.
While Pogba has bags of potential and, aged just 23, will continue to develop over the next few years, the absurd figure for a player who has yet to truly prove himself among the world’s best highlights just how out of control the transfer market has become. Lucrative television rights deals have handed clubs vast sums of money, and it seems, for most of those in charge of transfers dealings, that their bank balance now far outweighs their sense.
Should Pogba’s transfer go through, it would mean that the record has increased by almost £100 million in just two decades, with the highest paid figure standing at just £13,200,000 back in 1996, set by Barcelona when they secured the transfer of Brazilian legend Ronaldo from PSV Eindhoven.
Transfer fees are out of control, and yet, with a number of clubs vying to be the very best, given the astonishing figures that broadcasters are willing to pay to screen 90 minutes of football once a week, they will continue to rise year on year. A player that would have cost £20 million two years ago is now worth £50 million, and it won’t be long before £100 million transfers are the norm among Europe’s elite.
Football transfers have come a long way since Willie Groves became the very first £100 player back in 1893, and there’s no telling where it will end.
Early Days
Transfers didn’t exist prior to 1885, due to the fact that there was no system in place to enforce the registration of players to a certain club. However, after the Football Association decided to make football a professional game, the movement of players began to be controlled by the governing body.
Initially players were locked into year long contracts which had to be renewed at the end of each season. However, with the biggest clubs persuading the best players to join them with ease, the rules were soon changed to provide the player’s current club with the final say on their future. Realising that they could demand money in exchange for the release of a player, transfer fees were born.
By 1893, the record books began after West Bromwich Albion received a record-breaking £100 fee from Aston Villa, one of the biggest clubs in England at the time, for their star striker Willie Groves – a record that would stand for 11 years, before Newcastle splashed out £700 for Andy McCombie in 1904.
The figure would continue to grow following the turn of the century, with Alf Common’s switch from Sunderland to Middlesbrough breaking the £1000 mark in 1905.
Daniel Shea, Tommy Barber, Percy Dawson, David Jack, Syd Puddefoot, Warney Cresswell and Bob Kelly – all Englishmen – would all hold the record over the next twenty years, before David Jack stole it back in 1928, breaking the £10,000 mark in doing so. The move means that he is one of just three players to have smashed the record twice, alongside Argentina’s Diego Maradona and Brazil’s Ronaldo.
Going Global
Jack would remain the world’s most expensive signing until 1932, when Argentine clubs Tigre and River Plate
conducted the £23,000 transfer of Bernabé Ferreyra, who would go on to score 187 goals in 185 matches for the later. The switch saw the record fee double, and Ferreyra remained at the top of the pile for a total of 17 years – the longest time that one player has held the ‘world’s most expensive player’ title.
Following Ferreyra’s reign, the record continue to climb, while England’s former dominance continued to wane. The 1950s saw Italy take control of proceedings, with Serie A clubs Napoli, AC Milan and Juventus completing record moves for Swede Hans Jeppson, Uruguayan Juan Schiaffino and Argentine Enrique Omar Sivori respectively.
However, it was Inter Milan’s pursuit of Spanish icon Luis Suárez in 1961 which topped it off. Milan’s legendary manager, Helenio Herrera, had recently switched from Barcelona to the Italian club and was desperate to bring his best player with him, putting in a record £152,000 bid. The move had broken through the £100,000 mark and would set the precedent for years to come, with the record increasing to over £1 million within the next 15 years.
Johan Cruyff’s switch from Ajax to Barcelona, valued at £922,000, came agonisingly close in 1973, but it was Bologna’s Giuseppe Savoldi who became the first million pound player when he joined Napoli for £1.2 million in 1975.
Maradona: Breaking his own records
A year later, FIFA’s Player of the Century (an award he shares with Brazilian goalscorer Pelé) Diego Maradona would begin banging in the goals for Argentine club Argentinos Juniors, amassing 116 goals in 167 appearances before switching to Boca Juniors, where he scored another 28 in 40. Despite a disappointing World Cup in 1982, La Liga giants Barcelona splashed out £3 million to land the talented youngster following the summer tournament.
A fierce rivalry with Athletic Bilbao’s Andoni Goikoetxea would eventually see him leave the club following a huge on-pitch brawl following the 1984 Copa del Rey final, but bidding club Napoli would have to pay the price to land one of the world’s greatest talents. A £5 million switch made Maradona the only player in history to break his own transfer record, but Napoli reaped the rewards, winning their first ever Serie A title with Maradona leading the line, as he began to reach his peak.
The transfer of French forward Jean-Pierre Papin from Marseille to Milan would be the next big milestone, which saw the record hit the £10 million mark. Despite scoring 134 goals in 215 goals for Marseille, Papin struggled with injuries in Italy, scoring 18 goals in two seasons before he was eventually shipped off to Bayern Munich.
New Millennium
By that point, it had been 45 years since a British player (the last being Jackie Sewell, who cost Sheffield Wednesday £34,500 in 1951) had held the record, but prolific goalscorer Alan Shearer put England back on the map in 1996 when he transferred to Newcastle United for a cool £15 million, becoming the most expensive player in history.
Shearer didn’t hold the title for long, with Ronaldo, Denilson and Christian Vieri all stealing the crown before the turn of the millennium, which saw the figure increase to £32,100,000 in just four years – a 32,099,900% increase on what the record had been 100 years prior.
However, Vieri’s record didn’t last too long into the 2000s, with Hernan Crespo joining Lazio from Parma for £35.5 million that summer, before Luis Figo’s controversial switch from Barcelona to Real Madrid broke it again at a cost of £37 million. It seems surprising low now for a player who was among the best in the world, but the £37 million fee had been stated in his contract as a buy-out clause and, at the time, it came as a shock that Madrid were willing to match it.
The Galáctico Era
Figo, who months later was highlighted as the best player in the world throughout the 1999/2000 season by claiming the Ballon d’Or title, became Real Madrid’s very first ‘Galáctico’, beginning a period that would see the Spanish club top the world record transfer fee time and time again.
Just four more players have came to be known as the ‘world’s most expensive player’ since, with Zinedine Zidane becoming the first name on the list just a year after Figo’s transfer. The Frenchman saw the total increase by another £9.6 million when Madrid snapped him up for a fee in the region of £46.6 million.
The talented Frenchman, now managing the European heavyweights, paid back a large portion of his fee in his first season by scoring a memorable goal in the 2002 Champions League final, which handed the club a 2-1 victory over Bayer Leverkusen.
Zidane held on to the title for a total of eight years, before Ballon d’Or winner Kaká’s transfer from Inter Milan saw Madrid break their own record for a third consecutive time. While the Kaká deal topped the amount that they had paid for Zidane by just under £10 million, the euro price tag on the Brazilian was less, due to differing currency conversion rate. Resulting from this, Kaká was only ever considered the world’s most expensive signing in the UK.
However, Zidane would still lose his title just one month later, as Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo made a staggering £80 million switch to the Galácticos. Kaká would struggle with injuries and poor form in the Spanish capital, which ultimately saw him sold back to Milan four years later for a fraction of the price they had splashed out on him. Ronaldo, on the other hand, has given Alfredo di Stefano a run for his money as the greatest Real Madrid player of all time.
Despite his achievements, Ronaldo will not go down in history as the most expensive Madrid signing of all time, as his record was topped by Gareth Bale when he ditched London for Spain back in 2013. His estimated price tag differs greatly depending on the source, but the British press insisted that the transfer eventually cost Madrid £86 million, which makes him the most expensive player in history to date.
Bale has yet to surpass Ronaldo’s brilliance and may never do so, but, for now, the Welsh wizard sits at the top of the pack of the world’s most expensive players. Having struggled during his first few seasons, Bale is beginning to turn things around in Madrid and has finally started to justify his astronomical fee somewhat. However, it is unlikely that he will remain as the record holder for much longer.
First £1 billion player?
Pogba’s impending return to Manchester United will see him take the crown, smashing the £100 million mark in the process and taking the insanity that seems to have infected the market in recent years to a whole new level.
To put the deal into perspective, Aston Villa, one of English football’s most historic clubs, was recently taken over by Chinese businessman Dr Jiantong Xia for a grand total of just £60 million – Manchester United’s pursuit of Pogba looks set to cost them close to twice that amount in initial fees alone.
Napoli’s £1 million fee for Giuseppe Savoldi was branded as ridiculous back in 1975, yet here we are on the verge of witnessing a transfer valued at one hundred times that amount, and it is unlikely to end there. Figures show that the record transfer fee grows at a rate of approximately 12% per year since records began, and with more and more money flooding into the game it is likely to continue to increase for years to come.
While it may sound ridiculous now, should it continue to grow steadily at that rate, the first £1 billion transfer can be expected by 2035. By then, £100 million moves for players with far less to offer than Paul Pogba will the the norm among all clubs, while those few elite, like Real Madrid and Manchester United, will be fighting for the £1 billion signature of Cristiano Ronaldo Jr. and the ‘new Lionel Messi’.