Most expensive Premier League arrivals from different leagues
After a mad summer transfer window, the European football season is in full swing now (except in the UK for obvious reasons). Once again, Premier League teams were the most active, especially when it came to the big money transfers. Speaking of which, Antony, the most expensive player sold this summer wasn’t from any of the top five leagues but Dutch Champions Ajax. This made me think, who are the most expensive players that Premier League teams have bought from every major league?
Now, setting some ground rules here. We’ll only look at the most expensive player sold to an EPL side. Therefore, while Ousmane Dembele is the most expensive Bundesliga player ever sold, he’s not on the list courtesy of being bought by Barcelona which isn’t an English side. No second division signings included, I didn’t want to needlessly complicate my life. For that matter, I even excluded many of the Tier-1 European leagues. But rest assured, if any footballer came to EPL for £15 Million or more from a major league, you’ll find him in the following list —
This list can be segmented into three broad sections. Europe’s Top-7 Leagues, Rest of Europe, and Outside Europe. We’ll discuss each of these sections one by one.
European Top-7
This covers the first divisions of England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands. Yes, I have used Top 7 instead of the traditional Top 5, because it seemed more logical here and in general too (but that’s a whole different conversation).
One thing that’s common among these seven record signings, none of them have been out-and-out successes. Antony and Darwin Nunez are new signings, so they can be spared. Grealish, Lukaku, and Sancho were signed last season and they have had differing opinions about them. Grealish, rather than turning into a marquee signing, has become one of the many pieces in Pep’s constant rotation policy. Sancho, after having a turbulent start to last season, is getting closer to a breakthrough under Erik Ten Hag. For Lukaku though, it seems like the ship has sailed. Already back on loan at his beloved Inter, it’s hard to think how things will ever get better between him and Chelsea. Maybe a managerial change helps.
This leaves us with Nicoles Pepe and Kepa Arrizabalaga. They both signed for Arsenal and Chelsea respectively in 2019 and 2018. With the benefit of time on our side, it’s fair to say both the London sides significantly overpaid for these players. Pepe had scored more league goals in the 2018–19 season with Lille than he scored in the next three combined in Premier League. On loan with Nice now, he seems more of an afterthought for a resurrected, thriving Arsenal side. Same is the case with Kepa, who is playing second fiddle to Edouard Mendy, a keeper signed for less than one-third of his price.
Rest of Europe
We focus on some of the other leagues in Europe now. The most expensive name here is Fred, who went from Shakhtar Donetsk to Manchester United for over £50 Million. While he has been a mainstay in the United side, Fred has received his fair share of criticism throughout the period.
I was unable to recognize some of the players here, namely Wesley Moraes and Cenk Tosun, who came from Belgium and Turkey respectively. Promising signings who failed to make a major impact. On the other hand, there are some very iconic transfers too. Remember the tussle between United and Chelsea to sign a young John Obi Mikel from Norweighein Club Lyn. Or Tottenham equalling their club transfer record for a 22-year-old Luka Modric from Dinamo Zagreb. I wonder what happened to him?
Among the more recent ones, Tierney and Souchek turned out to be really good signings. While the former came to Arsenal from Celtic in neighboring Scotland, West Ham went all the way to the Czech league to get the latter. Leeds fans would be hoping the same, if not better, from former RB Salzburg midfielder Brenden Aaronson.
Outside Europe
A little peek outside Europe to round things up. Unfortunately, could only include four leagues here, all from the Americas. I checked some of the Asian leagues, mainly from the Middle East and East Asia. But none of them had anything significant to add.
Manchester City signed Gabriel Jesus from Palmeiras for a little less than £30 Million in 2017, a big sum for a teenager who had never played in Europe before. While not reaching the level he was once expected to, Jesus was a very successful signing considering he scored close to 100 goals for City before being sold to Arsenal for over £45 Million. Another City signing on the list is River Plate prodigy, Julian Alvarez. Considering how well City’s last Argentine striker did, Alvarez has huge shoes to fill.
The most expensive transfer from MLS is again a player I don’t know much about, Paraguayan midfielder Miguel Almiron. Almiron joined Newcastle in 2019 from Atlanta United. He has played in over 30 Premier League games for each of the last three seasons, which seems like a decent number. A transfer that definitely didn’t pan out as expected was of Enner Valencia from Mexican club Pachuca to West Ham. The Ecuadorian forward did well in the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which seems to have inspired the move from West Ham. But Valencia could only score 10 goals in his two full seasons at the club. He even played on loan for Everton before going back to Mexico.
