Where does Enzo Fernandez sit on top 10 player combined transfer fees list?
Enzo Fernandez has completed the second confusingly expensive move of his career and has earned himself a spot on the list of players with the highest career transfer fees.
If a club spends a world-record fee on a player, it tends to be with the view of keeping him for a long time but football does not always work out that way. And then you have the journeyman who joins about 10 clubs for a decent fee every time.
Put them together and you have the top 10 players to have cost the most over the course of their careers according to Transfermarkt.
10) Matthijs de Ligt – €197.50m
The once-hyped prodigy has been consistently sold for decent fees, earning him a spot on this list.
His performance with the Dutch club saw him get picked up for €85.5m by Juventus, who later sold him to Bayern Munich for a near-€20m loss.
The same fate occurred to the Germans, who sold him to Manchester United for €45m. Now he just needs to get fit and stay fit for the Reds.
9) Antoine Griezmann – €206.00m
This was the perfect transfer for Atletico: sell a player to Barcelona for €120m and get him back for €100m less just four years later.
Griezmann’s time at Barcelona is often harshly judged but he ultimately struggled because he wanted to play in a similar space to Lionel Messi. And he was never going to win that battle.
He scored just 35 goals in 102 games with 17 assists alongside that but fell out of favour and went back to Atletico, where he had a few burnt bridges to mend.
8) Joao Felix – €228.10m
Joao Felix must have a very good agent.
Despite not doing very much at all since his days at Benfica, the now 26-year-old has been sold for some ridiculous money.
Atletico bought him for €127.2m, immediately splashing the cash they earned from Griezmann’s sale to Barcelona, but perhaps even more strange is why Chelsea decided to spend €52m on him in 2024.
In a move no one could have seen coming, he was loaned out six months later and Chelsea still managed to get €35m back when they sold him to Al-Nassr.
7) Alvaro Morata – €229.20m
Morata must wake up each day and wonder which city he is in,
The Spaniard has made 10 transfers in his career, which has seen his overall purchase price reach the seventh highest in football history.
The most expensive of those was the £60m move to Chelsea in 2017. These days he’s on loan to Leganes from Cesc Fabregas’ Como.
6) Ousmane Dembele – €233.00m
If you had told Barcelona fans after his €148m move that Ousmane Dembele was a future Ballon d’Or winner, they would have been delighted. Unfortunately for them, it came at another club.
The bulk of Dembele’s combined transfer fee came with the move to Barcelona as his transfer to PSG was worth a more modest €50m, but he never really performed for the Catalans.
He scored 40 goals in 185 matches and has already beaten that tally in fewer games for PSG, but he looked like a player without a clear role. It was only once Luis Enrique moved him to centre-forward that Dembele showed his true worth.
5) Alexander Isak – €246.10m
Isak cost big money for both Newcastle United and Liverpool. He previously went from Dortmund to Real Sociedad for €15m before the Spanish side made a huge profit with his €77m sale to Newcastle.
The Geordies then made double their money back with a €145m move to Liverpool that make him the Reds’ record transfer.
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4) Cristiano Ronaldo – €247m
The bulk of Ronaldo’s transfer fees are from his moves to Real Madrid and then to Juventus.
He went to United for €19m and they made a profit of €75m with his sale to Madrid. The Bernabeu club would call that more than worth their money, considering he scored 450 goals and left for a profit.
Juventus spent €117m on him and while he did bag 101 goals, they did not make progress in the Champions League, which is what he was brought to do.
3) Enzo Fernandez – €310.25m
Fernandez’s €145m move took him from 24th in this list all the way up to third.
The €121m spent by Chelsea in 2023 already felt like a massive amount so the fact he has sold for even more a couple years later is hard to believe but ultimately, City wanted him.
It means Fernandez becomes the first player to break or equal the British transfer record twice.
2) Romelu Lukaku – €375.92m
When Lukaku joins a club, you can flip a coin as to whether he is any good or not.
He’s done well at a series of Italian clubs as well as West Brom, Everton and even United to an extent, but Chelsea will wonder why they never got this version of the Belgian.
They signed him twice and yet he never performed for the west London club. They made a huge loss on him when he left for Napoli in 2024 for €30.7m.
These days, he’s playing in Turkey for Fenerbahce, having joined for €6m in the summer.
1) Neymar – €400m
Neymar’s €222m move to PSG is enough on its own to put him ninth on this list but his €88m sale to Barcelona and his €90m sale to Al-Hilal put him top.
But of course it’s the PSG sale that he is most remembered for and the move that seemed to break football transfers forever.
It was more than double the previous transfer record and before Neymar, no player had even been sold for more than £100m. Since Neymar, 16 players have crossed that threshold.
Was it worth it? Arguably not for no player – especially one who did not win the Champions League – could justify such an expenditure, but it showed the world that PSG were not messing around.
