The 20 most expensive forwards ever: Hilarious transfer flops in the top five as Cunha, Mbeumo enter | OneFootball

Manchester City are prominent in a list of the 20 most expensive forwards in transfer history. Cunha and Mbeumo are in but No 1) will never be shifted.

Neymar actually makes more than one appearance. Bless him, he’ll be knackered.

We are talking basically any attacker who isn’t predominantly a centre-forward; those lucky sods have their very own list.

1) Neymar – £200m/€222m (Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain, August 2017)

A fee so ridiculous La Liga refused to receive the payment so PSG said LOL to FFP and handed the money straight to Barcelona, activating one of those stratospheric release clauses designed to typically make such transfers essentially impossible.

2) Eden Hazard – £143m/€160m (Chelsea to Real Madrid, July 2019)

The initial payment of £88.5m alone would have been a disastrous transfer, but Hazard accidentally activated enough variables in between numerous injuries before his retirement to make this an all-time great waste of money.

3) Philippe Coutinho – £142m/€160m (Liverpool to Barcelona, January 2018)

It’s difficult to pinpoint the most damning aspect of this deal from a buyer’s perspective, but it’s somewhere between the £106m initial fee, the £26.4m in clauses paid out for Coutinho’s first 90 appearances, the £89m premium Barcelona reluctantly agreed to pay if they signed any further Liverpool players in the next two years, the fact Coutinho won the Champions League with Bayern Munich while on loan from the Nou Camp, scoring twice in the 8-2 quarter-final humiliation of the Catalans, or the knockdown price of £17m paid by Aston Villa after four underwhelming years.

4) Ousmane Dembele – £135m/€147m (Borussia Dortmund to Barcelona, August 2017)

With a bruised ego and the Neymar cash burning a hole in their back pocket, Barcelona had tried all summer to sign Coutinho but after facing resistance from Liverpool, they went cap in hand to Dortmund for their back-up instead. And lessons were learned with a £369.6m release clause inserted this time – not that the Frenchman has ever come close to warranting such lavish interest until he found his ambipedal feet at PSG.

5) Joao Felix – £113m/€126m (Benfica to Atletico Madrid, July 2019)

Perhaps the worst match of player and manager there has ever been for a club-record transfer. How strange that the skilful individualist forward who doesn’t track back never meshed with a totalitarian coach who demands suffering and sacrifice from his subordinates. How strange that Atletico committed such sums on a teenager with 45 career first-team appearances. How strange that they couldn’t find anyone to buy him until Chelsea rocked up again.

6) Antoine Griezmann – £107m/€120m (Atletico Madrid to Barcelona, July 2019)

After The Decision favoured Atletico in 2018, the Frenchman could no longer avoid the Barcelona pull a year later in a sale which enraged Los Rojiblancos, considering a £180m release clause had only expired a couple of weeks before. Griezmann has somehow managed to remain without a La Liga winner’s medal through it all, timing his moves back and forth to Atletico and Barca comedically poorly.

7) Jack Grealish – £100m/€117.5m (Aston Villa to Manchester City, August 2021)

While it looked like an ungainly fit at first, Grealish went an awfully long way towards justifying his astronomical fee as a key part of a Treble-winning, mass-celebrating machine in his second season at the Etihad. Then it all started to fall apart again as he lost his way.

8) Neymar – £86.3m/€100m (Paris Saint-Germain to Al-Hilal, August 2023)

That world-record, market-breaking move to France delivered neither the Ballon d’Or nor the non-Barcelona Champions League that Neymar craved, so the Brazilian decided to cheat by joining the most successful side in AFC Champions League history for loadsa money, loadsa cars, loadsa bedrooms and loadsa saunas. A ruptured knee ligament meant he played seven times in Saudi Arabia before being released by mutual consent.

9) Gareth Bale – £85.2m/€100m (Tottenham to Real Madrid, September 2013)

After cramming half of his total Premier League goals by that point into a single phenomenal season, Bale became the latest obsession of a Real Madrid side desperate to win La Decima. The Welshman helped deliver that in his first campaign with a decisive goal in the Champions League final – the first of five European Cups and second of 15 trophies for a player the supporters nevertheless came to hate.

10) Antony – £82m/€95m (Ajax to Man Utd, September 2022)

Erik ten Hag put all his eggs in the Antony basket but a few must have cracked in transit from Amsterdam, the relatively slow and predominantly one-footed winger being moved on three years later for a loss of about £60m.

11) Jadon Sancho – £73m/€85m (Borussia Dortmund to Man Utd, July 2021)

In his three full seasons with Borussia Dortmund, Sancho’s least productive campaign was his first, when he scored 13 goals and provided 20 assists in 43 games. Across an entire Man Utd career which still technically remains a live thing after both Chelsea and Aston Villa settled with borrowing instead of buying him, the forward has scored 12 goals and assisted six in 83 games.

12) Nicolas Pepe – £72m/€80m (Lille to Arsenal, August 2019)

After offering the closest challenge to Kylian Mbappe for the Ligue Un Golden Boot, Arsenal spent what was a club-record fee on a player who has popped up around France, Turkey and Spain since being long outgrown by the upwardly mobile Gunners.

13) Neymar – £71.5m/€86.2m (Santos to Barcelona, June 2013)

The financial details are wonderfully murky but official documents submitted to the authority revealed the final fee, as well as a €40m payment to Neymar’s parents.

14) Kai Havertz – £71m/€80m (Bayer Leverkusen to Chelsea, September 2020)

Expensive flop who never fit into one defined position and suffered for regular managerial upheaval? Or scorer of the winning goals in the Champions League and Club World Cup finals? A little from column A, a little from column B.

15) Bryan Mbeumo – £65m/€75m (Brentford to Manchester United, July 2025)

It is a quite significant overpay by some market value standards but ultimately Manchester United believe Mbeumo can help sort out a failing attack after scoring 70 goals and assisting 51 in six seasons at Brentford.

16) Julian Alvarez – £64m/€75.8m (Manchester City to Atletico Madrid, August 2024)

The fee could rise to £80m but eyebrows were raised when Manchester City squeezed quite so much out of Atletico, even for a world champion with 54 goal contributions and six trophies in 103 appearances. A 29-goal debut season in Spain made it seem more as though the Premier League side had been fleeced.

17) James Rodriguez – £63m/€80m (Monaco to Real Madrid, July 2014)

A proper throwback transfer pretty much solely down to Rodriguez starring at the World Cup, the Colombian won a fair few trinkets at the Bernabeu but never came close to settling or justifying that fee.

18) Matheus Cunha – £62.5m/€74.2m (Wolves to Man Utd, June 2025)

In a welcome sign they are returning to a formerly successful transfer policy, Manchester United chucked a whole load of money at a team below them in the Premier League’s bottom half by virtue of goal difference alone.

19) Antoine Semenyo – £62.5m/€72m (Bournemouth to Manchester City, January 2026)

Most of the Premier League elite was interested but it was an open secret that Semenyo’s preference for some time was Manchester City, working with Pep Guardiola and winning all the trophies.

20) Kai Havertz – £62m/€71.7m (Chelsea to Arsenal, June 2023)

Mikel Arteta saw enough in those three mixed years at Stamford Bridge to deem Havertz crucial to his Arsenal process. Almost no-one else thought it was a signing worth making but the vision has become clearer over time, particularly so in the German’s injury-enforced absence.