Transfer (association football)

 ( Association Football Terminology ) 

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 £23,000, 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 £24,000 in March 1949. The record was broken seven further times between 1949 and 1961, when Luis Suárez was sold by Barcelona to Inter Milan for £152,000, becoming the first ever player sold for more than £100,000. In 1968, Pietro Anastasi became the first £500,000 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.

In English football, the first £1 million fee occurred in 1979, when Nottingham Forest signed striker Trevor Francis from Birmingham City. Later in the same year, the English record fee was broken twice, with fees of close to £1.5 million being paid by Manchester City to Wolverhampton Wanderers for Steve Daley, and by Wolverhampton Wanderers to Aston Villa for Andy Gray. This was during a time when transfer fees were rapidly growing in English football, and the £1.5 million mark was finally reached in 1981 when Manchester United signed Bryan Robson from West Bromwich Albion. However, a change in transfer regulations around this time meant that all fees had to be paid in full within 12 months of the transfer being completed, and at least half of the fee had to be paid when the transfer was first finalised. Consequently, Robson's record fee remained intact for six years, when Liverpool signed Peter Beardsley from Newcastle United for £1.9 million. However, fees well in excess of £2 million had already been paid to English clubs by Barcelona, who had signed Mark Hughes from Manchester United and Gary Lineker from Everton in 1986. At this time, the highest transfer fees were mostly paid by Italian and Spanish clubs. Juventus paid Liverpool more than £3 million for Ian Rush.

The first £2 million fee paid by an English club came in the summer of 1988, when Tottenham Hotspur signed Paul Gascoigne from Newcastle United. Within weeks of Gascoigne's transfer, the national record was broken again when Tony Cottee moved from West Ham United to Everton for £2.2 million, and again shortly afterwards when Ian Rush returned to Liverpool from Juventus for £2.8 million. In the space of two months in the summer of 1992, three transfers broke the record, all by Italian clubs: Jean-Pierre Papin transferred from Marseille to Milan, becoming the world's first ever £10 million player. Almost immediately, rivals Juventus topped that with the signing of Gianluca Vialli for a fee of £12 million from Sampdoria. Milan then completed the signing of Gianluigi Lentini for a fee of £13 million, which stood as the record for three years. In contrast, the English record fee that year was set at £3.6 million Alan Shearer moved to Blackburn Rovers from Southampton, a decade after the world's first £3 million transfer.

Lentini's transfer remained intact the world record fee for the next four years, although the national record was broken more than once in many countries including England. Shearer's £3.6million record fee was narrowly eclipsed 12 months later when Manchester United signed Roy Keane from Nottingham Forest for £3.75 million. In 1994, Blackburn Rovers paid a record £5 million for Chris Sutton from Norwich City, a decade after the world's first £5 million transfer. Then, in 1995, the national record fee was broken three times in six months – first when Andy Cole joined Manchester United from Newcastle United for £7 million, then with Arsenal's £7.5 million move for Dutch striker Dennis Bergkamp from Inter Milan, and finally with Liverpool's £8.5 million move for Nottingham Forest's Stan Collymore.

The 1996 transfer of Shearer from Blackburn Rovers to Newcastle United, for a fee of £15 million, kickstarted a year-by-year succession of global record breaking transfers, as well as being the first time in decades that an English club had broken the world record for a transfer fee. It also reflected the rapid rise in English transfer fees since the creation of the Premier League in 1992. Five years earlier, a year before the new league's creation, the national record fee had stood at £2.9 million. Even Collymore's transfer 12 months before Shearer's was little more than half of the money paid for the latest record-breaking transfer.

Ronaldo moved the following year to Inter Milan from Barcelona for a fee of £17 million, which was followed in 1998 by the shock transfer of his fellow countryman Denílson from São Paulo of Brazil to Real Betis of Spain for a fee of approximately £21 million. In 1999 and 2000, Italian clubs returned to their record-breaking ways, with Christian Vieri transferring from Lazio to Inter for £28 million, while Hernán Crespo's transfer from Parma to Lazio ensured he became the first player to cost more than £30 million. The transfer of Vieri led to the suicide of a Lazio fan, who wrote in his suicide note, "All that money for a footballer, but money is not everything in life," while the Crespo transfer prompted the BBC to ask, "Has the world gone mad?"

Although Shearer's status as the world's most expensive footballer would only last for one year, he remained unmatched as the most expensive footballer in England for four years, when Chelsea signed the Dutch striker Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink for £15 million. Later that year, Shearer's record was finally eclipsed when Leeds United paid £18 million for West Ham United's Rio Ferdinand. In the summer of 2001, the English record was broken twice in the space of a few weeks, both times by Manchester United, who first signed Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy for £19 million, and then signed Argentine midfielder Juan Sebastián Verón for £28.1 million. A year later, they broke the English record fee again by signing Rio Ferdinand from Leeds United for a fee in the region of £29 million, 11 years after Liverpool had paid a mere tenth of that figure to set an English record transfer fee when they signed Dean Saunders.

It took two weeks for the record to be broken when Luís Figo made a controversial £37 million move from Barcelona to fierce rivals Real Madrid. From that time through the 2015–16 season, Real Madrid held the record, with the next players to subsequently break the record being Zinedine Zidane in 2001 when he signed for £46 million from Juventus, Kaká from Milan for just under £60 million in 2009,The Times Madrid Signs Kaká [4] and £80 million transfer of Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United in the same year, lastly being Gareth Bale in 2013, who became the first player to cost €100 million when he transferred from Tottenham Hotspur. Manchester United claimed the record in 2016 when they spent €105 million for Paul Pogba, who returned to the club after four seasons at Juventus. This record was broken in 2017 when Paris Saint-Germain spent €222 million to sign Neymar from Barcelona.

There have been occasions when a world-record bid has been made but the transfer was never completed. In 2003, shortly after Roman Abramovich had taken over Chelsea, the club made a bid of £71.4 million (€101.5M) for Real Madrid's Raúl, which was rejected, and in 2009, shortly having been taken over by Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Manchester City made a bid of £100 million (€111M) for Milan's Kaká. The bid was accepted, but after deliberating over the move for a week, Kaká turned down the transfer despite being offered weekly wages of £500,000.

The sharp rise in transfer fees since the 1990s, and in particular into the third millennium, has been attributed primarily to a large rise in television rights fees and sponsorship. For example, in 2013, new broadcaster BT Sport announced they had agreed to pay £897 million over a three-year period to gain exclusive broadcast rights to the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League. Transfer fees are not always officially confirmed by the transacting clubs, and figures published by unofficial sources may or may not take into account various fees such as those paid to Sports agent or a third party, performance-related elements of the fee, and the notional value of any players included in part exchange. This leads to different figures being given by different sources. Performance-related clauses have become more common in recent years, meaning that it is harder to produce definitive lists of the largest transfer fees than was the case in the past. For example, the 2004 transfer of Wayne Rooney from Everton to Manchester United cost an initial fee of £20 million that rose to £27 million due to the number of appearances he made and the number of trophies he won with the club.

The following tables show the highest transfer fees ever paid in euro for players and managers. The first features the top 20 most expensive transfers involving players, and contains eight transfers which broke the world transfer record: those of Neymar in 2017, Paul Pogba, Gareth Bale, Cristiano Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane, Luís Figo and Hernán Crespo all broke the record. The second list shows the top 20 most expensive transfers involving managers. When a manager moves from one club to another, it usually involves a small figure of compensation being paid, and the figure is rarely released publicly. Because of this, there have only been 20 managers who have ever cost more than £1 million in compensation, as detailed in the table.

• List of most expensive association football transfers
• List of most expensive women's association football transfers

A pre-contract agreement may be broken by the player or the club, depending on the completeness of the terms of that pre-contract and thus how close it was to being considered a valid contract under local law. In the 2014 case of Beijing Renhe FC v. Marcin Robak, the player met with the Chinese club's owner, agreed on length and compensation, put those in writing, received a signed copy of both the transfer agreement from his current club and his employment contract, and then Beijing Renhe FC retracted the agreement while saying they couldn't finalize transfer terms with his departing club.

FIFA's Dispute Resolution body ruled that due to the extensive provisions and signatures on the exchanged documents, a legally binding contract had been entered into, and awarded €330,000 to Robak in compensation. On appeal, CAS upheld the award but further ruled that because of the tentative nature or omission of some common contract provisions, it was in fact a pre-contract, subject to lower damages (while still obliging all sides to resolve final contract terms in good faith, which the acquiring club had not done). In another case, Ross County midfielder Richard Brittain signed a pre-contract with St Johnstone. The agreement was made in January 2013, but Brittain changed his mind three months later, citing family reasons. Ross County registered the player as their own in June, and, after discussions with the Scottish FA, St Johnstone and Ross County came to an agreement to let Brittain stay at the club, with St Johnstone cancelling the pre-contract agreement if Ross County paid compensation.

Although a pre-contract agreement is usually signed to secure the future registration of a player, an agreement can be reached where the club gaining the registration can pay a fee to the other club to sign the player earlier, as was the case in January 2013, when Schalke 04 midfielder Lewis Holtby, who had six months remaining on his contract, signed a pre-contract agreement with Tottenham Hotspur, but at the end of the month, Tottenham paid a fee of £1.5 million to bring the transfer forward.