Liverpool legends feature in top 10 best massive-money transfers in history
The transfer window closes this Friday and it’s safe to say it might have been the craziest one to date with Chelsea spending over £350m and the Saudi Arabia Pro League recruitment drive kicking into overdrive.
Transfer fees have largely lost all sense of meaning with £30m being spent on unknown players and back-ups when just over a decade ago, it was a symbol of excellence and that you were amongst the very best players in your position in the world.
With money being thrown around now, there have been so many big-money transfer busts but what about those that have worked out?
Let’s take a look at 10 that did from the last 30 years, most of which are a club, British or world-record fee.
10) Alan Shearer – Blackburn Rovers to Newcastle United, £15m, 1996
As a result of Harry Kane’s departure for Bayern Munich, Shearer’s ‘Premier League record’ of 260 goals is likely to remain intact until Erling Haaland decides he wants to break it.
An incredible 112 of these strikes came in the first four seasons of the rebranded league with Blackburn, in which he helped bring the title to Ewood Park. But things soon fell apart after that 1995 win and after top scoring at Euro 96, the England marksman was the hottest property in football.
He turned down titles and glory with Manchester United for a second time to return home to his beloved Newcastle United in a world-record move, much to the delight of the Toon Army. No trophies came in his 10 years at St. James’, but he did break the club’s all-time scoring record. Needless to say, he was value for money.
9) Ronaldo – Inter Milan to Real Madrid, £39m, 2002
By 2002, Florentino Perez’s Galactico plan was in full swing and after the 2002 World Cup, he looked to add the latest and greatest piece to his collection in the shape of the comeback king, R9.
Inter said they would never sell Ronaldo but by deadline day, he was decked out in white being presented at the Bernabeu, ready to join Zidane, Figo, Raul et al. in the football equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters.
Team success didn’t come readily in his four-and-a-half years in the Spanish capital, only winning one league title, but it can’t be argued that Ronaldo held up his end of the bargain, scoring 104 goals in 177 appearances before returning to Milan, this time with AC.
8) Ruud van Nistelrooy – PSV to Manchester United, £19m, 2001
He might have found himself unfortunate to join United just as they went into a transitional period between the Treble-winning side and the Rooney/Ronaldo 2006-09 vintage, but Ruud van Nistelrooy’s impact at Old Trafford was like few others at the famous ground.
Arriving a year late due to injury, a British record transfer fee was instantly paid back with a ridiculous 80 goals in his first two seasons. He also won the Premier League, the PFA Player of the Year, top-scored in the Champions League in both seasons and the league in the second.
An FA Cup and a League Cup (in which he didn’t play the final, which led to his eventual messy exit) followed, which was scant reward for his brilliance – 150 goals in 219 games was the final tally for the best finisher at the club since Denis Law.
Hojlund next: Ranking Man Utd’s striker signings since Ruud van Nistelrooy left
7) Gareth Bale – Tottenham to Real Madrid, £86m, 2013
It might have ended rather stickily for the Bale at Real, but his nine-year stint was a massive success from start to near-finish.
A world-record fee was required to part Daniel Levy with his prized asset on deadline day in 2013 and Bale quickly began to pay back that huge fee, scoring winners in both the Copa del Rey and Champions League finals in his first season.
He added two more Champions League final goals in 2018, including one of the greatest ever, against Liverpool, and even if there were injuries and issues with Zidane, who can argue with five Champions Leagues? Apart from all of the Real Madrid fans, it seems.
6) Zinedine Zidane – Juventus to Real Madrid, £46m, 2001
Alongside Ronaldo, the most iconic player of the late 1990s-early 2000s era of football, and one who Florentino Perez simply had to have at Real.
It took a then-whopping £46m fee, which smashed Figo’s record a year prior, to bring him from Turin to Madrid. In five seasons at the club before retirement, Zidane made the 5 shirt so famous that Jude Bellingham now wears it.
He is best remembered for his all-time great Champions League final-winning goal in 2002 against Bayer Leverkusen, and his move to Real eventually paved the way for him to become the club’s manager and win three more in a row.
5) Alisson – Roma to Liverpool, £67m, 2018
Some eyebrows were raised when Jurgen Klopp decided to break the world-record fee for a goalkeeper who had played just one season at Roma. Looking back now, those doubts seem hilarious given how good Alisson has been in his five-and-a-bit years on Merseyside.
His signing alongside those of Virgil van Dijk and Fabinho transformed the Reds and saw them embark on their best period of success since their 1980s heyday. Alisson was central to the 2019 Champions League, 2020 Premier League and 2022 domestic cup double wins, and even scored a headed winner to help seal a top-four place in 2021.
It is now debated whether he is the best keeper of the Premier League era, which is testament to how well the transfer worked out.
Who’s the greatest Premier League goalkeeper of all time? pic.twitter.com/DATC330J3a
— Planet Football (@planetfutebol) August 29, 2023
4) Virgil van Dijk – Southampton to Liverpool, £75m, 2018
Just ahead of Alisson is the man who has played in front of him for much of his Anfield career: Virgil van Dijk.
Liverpool had tried to land the Dutch centre-back in the summer of 2017, but their efforts led to tapping-up complaints and the transfer being put on ice. He finally made the move in January 2018 for a world-record fee for a defender and instantly helped transform the Reds’ defence, which had been leaky in Klopp’s reign to date.
As mentioned, he helped the club to their biggest success in a generation and also scooped up multiple individual awards, notably the PFA Player of the Year gong in 2019. Money well spent, and then some.
3) Kevin de Bruyne – Wolfsburg to Manchester City, £54m, 2015
KDB had already been in the Premier League with Chelsea but was quickly discarded by Jose Mourinho, like Mo Salah. How the Blues would live to regret that.
To be fair, nobody expected either of them to go on to become two of the very best players in recent English history, with Paul Merson infamously claiming it was ‘an absolute joke’ City were putting that club record money down on the Belgian in 2015.
He quickly made a mockery of the critics and went to an entirely new level under Pep Guardiola, now captaining the club.
De Bruyne has been central to everything City have won in recent years, breaking all sorts of assists records in the process. A bargain.
2) Luis Suarez – Liverpool to Barcelona, £75m, 2014
Suarez had dominated the Premier League in his final two seasons on Merseyside and it felt like just a matter of time before he made the move to either Real Madrid or Barcelona.
This duly happened in the summer of 2014 when, despite the striker being banned for several months after biting Giorgio Chiellini at the World Cup, Barca paid £75m to secure his services and form the MSN front three, the best in recent football history.
That fee was paid back within a season as Suarez helped the club to a second treble, scoring in the Champions League final. He followed that with 59 goals in his second season and a total of 198 from just 283, as well as countless assists. Bargain.
1) Cristiano Ronaldo – Manchester United to Real Madrid, £80m, 2009
Who else could it be? Nine seasons at Real Madrid saw Ronaldo become one of the two best players to ever play the game (or at least in the last 30 years).
Four Champions Leagues were added to the one he had already won while at United, and the same happened with the Ballon d’Or as him and Lionel Messi took turns of dominating the sport on a yearly basis. Two La Liga titles also came, but it was in Europe where Ronaldo thrived.
An all-time Real Madrid record 450 goals in nine seasons, an average of 50 per year and that’s not considering he was injured for part of his first season. He top-scored in the Champions League six times – his tally of 17 in 2013/14 is the single best scoring season in the competition’s near-70-year history.
£80m smashed the world record fee by over £20m but it soon became clear that Real had underpaid by a large amount, such was Ronaldo’s greatness.
