World football transfer record

The **world football transfer record** is the record for the most expensive transfer in football. The current record was set in August 2017 by Neymar's transfer from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain for €222 million (£200 million).

## History

The first player to ever be transferred for a fee was Scottish striker Willie Groves, who was signed by Aston Villa in 1893 from West Bromwich Albion for £100. The first transfer over £1,000 happened in 1905, when Sunderland striker Alf Common signed for Middlesbrough. In 1928, the first transfer over £10,000 happened, when Bolton Wanderers inside forward David Jack signed for Arsenal for £10,890. Initially, Bolton had asked for £13,000, which was double the previous transfer record.

The first player not from Great Britain to break the record was in Bernabé Ferreyra, when River Plate signed him from Tigre for £23k. Ferreyra's record wouldn't be broken until 1949, when Derby County signed Manchester United inside forward Johnny Morris for £24k. The record would be broken seven more times between 1949 and 1961. That year, Inter Milan signed Luis Suárez Miramontes from Barcelona for £152k, making him the first player sold for more than £100k. In 1968, Pietro Anastasi became the first player sold for £500k, when Juventus signed him from Varese, which was followed seven years later by Giuseppe Savoldi becoming the first million pound player when he transferred from Bologna to Napoli.

In 1992, the transfer record was broken three times in 61 days: Jean-Pierre Papin's transfer from Marseille to AC Milan saw him become the first ever £10m player. Almost immediately, their rivals Juventus broke the record with the signing of Gianluca Vialli for £12m from Sampdoria. Milan then completed the signing of Gianluigi Lentini for a fee of £13m which stood as the record for three years.

Between 1996 and 2001, the transfer record was broken eight times, ending with Real Madrid signing Zinedine Zidane from Juvnetus in July 2001 for a fee of £48m (150 billion lire). That record would stand for 8 years, until Real Madrid broke the record twice in June 2009, first when they signed Kaká from Milan for €67m (£56m), and later when they signed Cristiano Ronaldo for £80m (€94m) from Manchester United.

Real Madrid would break the record again four years later, when they signed Gareth Bale from Tottenham Hotspur in 2013. Although Real initially insisted that the transfer cost €91.59m, the deal was commonly reported to be around €100m (around £85.1m). In 2016, documents would be leaked that revealed that instalments brought the final Bale fee up to a total of €100,759,418.

In 2017, the world transfer record would be doubled, when Paris Saint-Germain payed the €222m buyout fee of Barcelona's Neymar, which was converted to between £198m and or £200m by different sources. That transfer was more than double the previous record of Paul Pogba's transfer from Juventus to Real Madrid.

## List of transfer records

_The transfer fees fluctuate due to exchange rate variations and are based on the exchange rate at the time of the transfer._

|Year|style="width: 25%;"|Player|style="width: 25%;"|From|style="width: 25%;"|To|data-sort-type="number"|Fee (£)|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|1893|Willie Groves|West Bromwich Albion|Aston Villa||||||
|1896|Fred Wheldon|Small Heath|Aston Villa||||||
|1903|Ben Green|Barnsley|Small Heath||||||
|1904|Alf Common <span style="font-size:70%">(1)</span>|Sheffield United|Sunderland||||||
|1904|Andy McCombie|Sunderland|Newcastle United||||||
|1905|Alf Common <span style="font-size:70%">(2)</span>|Sunderland|Middlesbrough||||||
|1913|Daniel Shea|West Ham United|Blackburn Rovers||||||
|1913|Tommy Barber|Bolton Wanderers|Aston Villa||||||
|1914|Percy Dawson|Heart of Midlothian|Blackburn Rovers||||||
|1920|David Jack <span style="font-size:70%">(1)</span>|Plymouth Argyle|Bolton Wanderers||||||
|1921|Tom Hamilton|Kilmarnock|Preston North End||||||
|1922|Syd Puddefoot|West Ham United|Falkirk||||||
|1922|Warney Cresswell|South Shields|Sunderland||||||
|1925|Bob Kelly|Burnley|Sunderland||||||
|1928|David Jack <span style="font-size:70%">(2)</span>|Bolton Wanderers|Arsenal||||||
|1932|Bernabé Ferreyra|Tigre|River Plate||||||
|1949|Johnny Morris|Manchester United|Derby County||||||
|1949|Eddie Quigley|Sheffield Wednesday|Preston North End||||||
|1950|Trevor Ford|Aston Villa|Sunderland||||||
|1951|Jackie Sewell|Notts County|Sheffield Wednesday||||||
|1952|Hans Jeppson|Atalanta|Napoli||||||
|1954|Juan Alberto Schiaffino|Peñarol|Milan||||||
|1957|Omar Sívori|River Plate|Juventus||||||
|1961|Luis Suárez|Barcelona|Inter Milan||||||
|1963|Angelo Sormani|Mantova|Roma||||||
|1967|Harald Nielsen|Bologna|Inter Milan||||||
|1968|Pietro Anastasi|Varese|Juventus||||||
|1973|Johan Cruyff|Ajax|Barcelona||||||
|1975|Giuseppe Savoldi|Bologna|Napoli||||||
|1976|Paolo Rossi|Juventus|Vicenza||||||
|1982|Diego Maradona <span style="font-size:70%">(1)</span>|Boca Juniors|Barcelona||||||
|1984|Diego Maradona <span style="font-size:70%">(2)</span>|Barcelona|Napoli||||||
|1987|Ruud Gullit|PSV Eindhoven|Milan||||||
|1990|Roberto Baggio|Fiorentina|Juventus||||||
|1992|Jean-Pierre Papin|Marseille|Milan||||||
|1992|Gianluca Vialli|Sampdoria|Juventus||||||
|1992|Gianluigi Lentini|Torino|Milan||||||
|1996|Ronaldo <span style="font-size:70%">(1)</span>|PSV Eindhoven|Barcelona||||||
|1996|Alan Shearer|Blackburn Rovers|Newcastle United||||||
|1997|Ronaldo <span style="font-size:70%">(2)</span>|Barcelona|Inter Milan||||||
|1998|Denílson|São Paulo|Real Betis||||||
|1999|Christian Vieri|Lazio|Inter Milan||||||
|2000|Hernán Crespo|Parma|Lazio||||||
|2000|Luís Figo|Barcelona|Real Madrid||||||
|2001|Zinedine Zidane|Juventus|Real Madrid||||||
|2009|Kaká|Milan|Real Madrid||||||
|2009|Cristiano Ronaldo|Manchester United|Real Madrid||||||
|2013|Gareth Bale|Tottenham Hotspur|Real Madrid||||||
|2016|Paul Pogba|Juventus|Manchester United||||||
|2017|Neymar|Barcelona|Paris Saint-Germain||||||

### Number of players by country

|scope="col" class="unsortable"|Country|scope="col"|Player records|scope="col"|Record selling|scope="col"|Record buying|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|England|16|20|20|||||
|Italy|8|14|18|||||
|Argentina|5|3|1|||||
|Brazil|5|1|0|||||
|France|3|1|1|||||
|Scotland|3|2|1|||||
|Netherlands|2|3|0|||||
|Wales|2|0|0|||||
|Portugal|2|0|0|||||
|Spain|1|5|9|||||
|Uruguay|1|1|0|||||
|Denmark|1|0|0|||||
|Sweden|1|0|0|||||