Grading the 10 Most Expensive World Football Transfers of All Time
We’re currently in the thick of the European primary transfer window. There’s still a month for most clubs to make big moves. But every league game matters, and most teams kick off soon, putting a premium on getting deals done ASAP.
We’ve already seen Liverpool set a new Premier League record by signing Florian Wirtz to a $171 million deal from Borussia Dortmund in late June. And there have already been 19 transfers agreed upon with fees reportedly north of $50 million.
Sunday also marks the eight-year anniversary of the most expensive transfer in world football history, when Paris Saint-Germain paid about $255 million to acquire Brazilian star Neymar from FC Barcelona.
However, shelling out big bucks on the transfer market doesn't always result in trophies. Some big spenders have fared far better than others in terms of how their transfer expenditures have paid off.
Here’s a look at the 10 most expensive transfer fees ever paid in world soccer (as of Friday, Aug. 1), graded with the benefit of hindsight. Fair warning: Mom and Dad may not love this report card.
All data from Transfermarkt, with price converted to U.S. dollars from Euros as of Aug. 1, 2025.
10. Jack Grealish ($135.1 Million)
1 of 10
Buyer: Manchester City
Seller: Aston Villa
Window: Summer 2022
Jack Grealish remains the most expensive signing in City history. At the time, he also marked the highest fee ever paid for an English player and by an English club.
On overall balance, it’s hard to say Grealish lived up to that status. While he won three league titles after his move, he was never considered City’s most irreplaceable player. And his overall haul of 12 goals and 12 assists in four Premier League seasons is hardly transformational.
With that said, he was absolutely brilliant during the 2022-2023 UEFA Champions League for the Cityzens, helping City finally win their first European championship and second major European honor.
Throughout his City tenure, Grealish has also been famous for his everyman personality, serving as the prototypical “glue guy” in a club with an embarrassment of superiorly talented individuals who bring considerably sized egos.
While he was probably overpriced, he wasn't a flop either.
Grade: B-
9. Antoine Griezmann ($138.0 Million)
2 of 10
Buyer: FC Barcelona
Seller: Atletico Madrid
Window: Summer 2019
Antoine Griezmann’s move from Atletico Madrid to FC Barcelona was troubled from the very start. The two clubs disputed the legality of Barca’s move to activate the buyout clause in his contract.
Maybe as much as anything, his football upbringing amid clubs that always fancied themselves underdogs on some level was never quite a fit for the culture of the Blaugrana.
That said, with 22 league goals across two La Liga seasons at the Camp Nou, he was far from a total failure. Barca’s inability to meet expectations during Griezmann’s tenure had more to do with an overall generational transition rather than his specific acquisition.
You might also argue Griezmann was too old to be worth the expenditure—he was 28 at the time—particularly since so much of his reputation was built upon a legendary workrate.
However, he returned to his previous levels of production for two more seasons at Atleti after his time with Barca was over.
Grade: D
8. Eden Hazard ($138.9 Million)
3 of 10
Buyer: Real Madrid
Seller: Chelsea
Window: Summer 2019
It would be hard to get less of a return on your transfer investment than Real Madrid did from Eden Hazard even if you went into the market purposefully looking to blow money.
Some players have a much longer shelf life than others. It turned out that Hazard belonged in the “others” category after joining Los Merengues from Chelsea during the summer of 2019.
Of Hazard’s 151 career goals in competitive club play, only seven came during his four injury-plagued seasons for Real Madrid. His club won two league titles and a 2021-22 UEFA Champions League crown during his tenure there, but you could hardly argue he had much to do with it.
Recurring injuries were one factor. Another was a deteriorating relationship with manager Carlo Ancelotti.
He departed the club by mutual consent following the 2022-23 season. Three months later, he announced his retirement three months shy of his 33rd birthday.
It was a cruel end for a player who was among the most important figures in Chelsea’s twin Premier League-winning sides in 2014-15 and 2016-17.
Grade: F
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7. Enzo Fernández ($139.2 Million)
4 of 10
Buyer: Chelsea
Seller: Benfica
Window: Winter 2023
Enzo Fernández was only two weeks past his 22nd birthday when Chelsea completed a rare winter blockbuster move to pry the box-to-box midfielder from Benfica.
After weathering a period of instability at the London club, Fernández has emerged as one of the most dependable parts of a youthful side that suddenly looks like it could be built to challenge for trophies domestically and on the continent for the remainder of the decade.
The Argentine scored and had an assist during Chelsea’s furious rally to a 4-1 win over Real Betis in this May’s UEFA Europa Conference League final. He then added a goal and three assists during the Blues’ run to the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup title, complete with their 3-0 thrashing of Paris Saint-Germain in the final.
Fernández gets less attention domestically than versatile English attacker Cole Palmer. But he’s every bit as important for manager Enzo Maresca, having worn the captain’s armband 32 times across all competitions last season.
The only thing that depresses his grade is that the fee paid was more than double his Transfermarkt valuation at the time.
Grade: B+
6. Florian Wirtz ($143.8 Million)
5 of 10
Buyer: Liverpool
Seller: Bayer Leverkusen
Window: Summer 2025
It’s pretty heady stuff for Florian Wirtz to set a club transfer record at a Liverpool side that has won a joint-record 20 English league titles and is the nation’s most successful continental club with six European Cup/Champions League crowns.
But the 22-year-old should be plenty prepared for what Anfield will ask of him based on what has transpired so far within his senior career.
Wirtz has been a pivotal player—perhaps the pivotal player—in restoring Bayer Leverkusen’s place as a perennial Bundesliga contender during the last two seasons. He helped The Factory XI finally put a halt to Bayern Munich’s record-breaking 11 year title run during the 2023-24 season.
Throughout that time, he was guided by none other than Liverpool legend Xavi Alonso as his manager.
Wirtz also has two things going in his favor that most of the players on this list didn’t: His transfer comes well before the likely peak years of his career, and he arrives at a club that is already in a moment of satisfaction following only their second league title since their 1980s heyday.
Grade: Incomplete
5. João Félix ($146.3 Million)
6 of 10
Buyer: Atletico Madrid
Seller: Benfica
Window: Summer 2019
The tale of João Félix is one of the stranger ones on this list. It’s hard to know exactly how to grade his acquisition for Atletico Madrid’s club-record expenditure.
On the one hand, Félix's overall production doesn’t suggest value. His 12 goal involvements in 2020-21 and 2021-22 still represent his best efforts in a domestic league season since the purchase. That’s to say nothing of the erosion of his relationship with manager Diego Simeone, leading to season-long loans in each of the last three campaigns.
At the same time, Félix was part of Atleti’s first domestic title-winning side in seven years in 2020-2021, and he was named the club’s player of the season by supporters in the following campaign.
Sometimes clubs in Atleti’s position—a team looking to make the jump from fringe contender to regular challenger—need to make a major financial splash to set the tone internally and signal intention externally.
The move for Félix did that, so it's graded a bit less harshly than it otherwise might be.
Grade: C-
4. Ousmane Dembélé ($155.3 Million)
7 of 10
Buyer: FC Barcelona
Seller: Borussia Dortmund
Window: Summer 2017
Ousmane Dembélé has always been talented, but anyone who says they predicted his recently concluded Ballon d’Or-worthy season is lying.
With that said, his efficiency from six seasons playing home matches at the Camp Nou is more impressive than his overall totals from those seasons. In total, he averaged 0.41 assists per 90 minutes in La Liga for Barca and 0.39 goals per 90 in Champions League play.
His biggest enemy was recurring hamstring trouble, which limited him to no more than 30 league appearances and 20 league starts in any campaign since leaving Dortmund.
Those issues remain now, and they're the reason why he missed most of PSG’s FIFA Club World Cup campaign after helping the Parisians win their long-sought first Champions League title. They also add more impressive context to the season he just completed.
It didn’t help that Dembélé’s Barca tenure coincided with one of the most unstable periods in recent Blaugrana memory, spanning across five different full-time managers.
Grade: D+
3. Philippe Coutinho ($155.3 Million)
8 of 10
Buyer: FC Barcelona
Seller: Liverpool
Window: Winter 2018
Philippe Coutinho took a lot of flack from Barcelona supporters for failing to live up to his price tag following his winter move, but it wasn’t entirely warranted.
When he was on the field, the Brazilian was more or less the same player as he had been through most of his career while building his reputation as one of the game’s elite, chance-creating midfielders at Liverpool. During his first 1.5 seasons at Barca, followed by a season on loan at Bayern Munich, he won three consecutive domestic league titles.
He was also part of Bayern’s 2019-20 UEFA Champions League-winning side, coming off the bench after halftime to help see out their 1-0 final victory over PSG in a match played behind mostly closed doors during the pandemic.
With that said, Liverpool clearly sold at the ideal time. After registering 34 goal contributions in his last 1.5 seasons playing for the Anfield faithful, he continued that production rate for his first half-season at Barcelona, then never approached it again.
Even his return to Brazil with Vasco da Gama hasn’t gone to plan. He has yet to score this season, and his boyhood club are currently flirting with relegation, sitting 16th in the Brazilian Serie A table as of the time of writing.
Grade: D+
2. Kylian Mbappé ($207 Million)
9 of 10
Buyer: Paris Saint-Germain
Seller: AS Monaco
Window: Summer 2018
It’s probably impossible for anyone to live up to the mind-bending fee that accompanied Kylian Mbappé’s intraleague move from Monaco to Paris Saint-Germain when he was still a teenager.
But any assertions of disappointment are based more on PSG’s unusual position as by far the best side in their domestic league, placing outsized importance on winning the Champions League to prove their overall credibility.
That honor escaped Mbappé during his seven years in Paris. But he won six Ligue 1 titles, scored 256 goals across all competitions and assisted 96 more during those seven seasons.
His goal-contribution rate of 1.28 per 90 minutes over such a long span is as good as anyone not named Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo has ever done it in Europe. (Zlatan Ibrahimović had a similar spell at PSG but over fewer years.)
That Transfermarkt still considers his current value at $207 million is reflective of a tenure that fully lived up to expectations before finally making his long-rumored move to Real Madrid a season ago.
Grade: A-
1. Neymar ($255.3 Million)
10 of 10
Buyer: Paris Saint-Germain
Seller: FC Barcelona
Window: Summer 2017
For all the drama surrounding Neymar’s six seasons in Paris, staying healthy was the ultimate culprit in any suggestions that his world-record arrival did not bring PSG what was promised.
According to Transfermarkt’s data, the Brazilian missed a total of 137 matches for club and country during his time in Navy and Red due to injury and fitness-related reasons. That limited him to an average of fewer than 30 appearances per season across all competitions. (Of course, some of those absences were rumored to be personal preference.)
Even so, Neymar still produced goal contributions at a rate only fractionally off Mbappé’s pace over six seasons.
While Neymar also failed to capture that elusive Champions League crown during his time in France, PSG recouped a sizable chunk of their investment when they sold him to Al-Hilal in the 2023 summer window.
They clearly got out just at the right time, with Neymar beset by even more severe fitness issues and looking like a shadow of his former self ever since.
Grade: C
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