Football's World Record Transfers

Ever since Dutch legend Johan Cruyff moved from Ajax Amsterdam to Barcelona of Spain for an unthinkable World record fee of £922,000 in 1973, football has seen the records tumble at will in subsequent years that it now stands at £80m and likely to be broken within the week by Gareth Bale's £85m transfer.

The first player to break the £1m barrier
in transfer was Italian Giussepe  Savoldi who crossed over from Bologna to Napoli in 1975, just two years after that Cruyff record transfer. Subsequent seasons witnessed the record broken again until 1982 when Diego Armando Maradona moved to Barcelona from Boca Juniors of Argentina for a new world record fee of £3m. Maradona till date remains the only man to have broken the record twice when he moved to Barcelona for Napoli two years later and this time for £5m.

Players like Jean Pierre Papin (first player to smash the £10m barrier in 1992), Ruud Gullit, Roberto Baggio, Gianluca Vialli, vieri, Crespo and luis Figo etc have all at one time held the record.

Zinedine Zidane raised the bar to a new height in 2001 when he signed for Real Madrid from Juventus for an astronomical fee of £53m. Till date, this remains the longest standing Transfer record as it took a whole eight years before anyone could break it. And that came in the form of Brazilian Kaka, who in 1999 toppled that record with his £56m transfer from Ac Milan to Real Madrid. Sadly for Kaka, his record barely lasted a month as Real further splashed out on Christiano Ronaldo for what remains as the current World Record fee.....£80m.

If the £80m record could be smashed within four years, then there's no doubt the £100m barrier is on the line to be broken within this decade? Could it be Messi....well, not quite as he is valued well over £200m by his club Barcelona. Hmmm!!