Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo were both born in 2001, which, until Chelsea bought that pair in back-to-back windows, was the last year to see the British transfer record broken twice.
And given the escalation in transfer fees football is experiencing, it is unlikely Caicedo’s mark of £115million ($144m) will last for long.
Here, The Athletic takes a look at how the British transfer record has progressed since the inception of the Premier League in 1992. And, just to be clear, we are only counting the record being broken when a British club has made the purchase.
The lowdown
First, here is every time the British transfer record has been broken from the summer of 1992 onwards:
If you add up the fees for the first 10 transfers (from Alan Shearer’s 1992 move to Juan Sebastian Veron in 2001), the total comes to just £450,000 more than Chelsea paid for Caicedo in this summer’s window — a sign of how exponentially transfer fees have increased over the past 30 years or so.
Only two players have broken the record twice — Shearer and Rio Ferdinand — and both captained England.
Of the 16 players, nine have won the Premier League. Stan Collymore, Andriy Shevchenko, Robinho, Fernando Torres, Paul Pogba, Fernandez and Caicedo are the players that haven’t.
However, Torres, Pogba and Fernandez are the three among the 16 to have won the World Cup.
Positions
It is interesting to note that just two of the first 14 transfers were midfielders, yet each of the last four has been.
A sporting director explained to The Athletic this summer why No 6s are costing so much money: “Their skill set is actually quite scarce. When you get one who’s got the physical ability, the defensive acumen to do what those guys can do and they’re good with the ball, even if they don’t score or create goals consistently, that’s why you have the premium.”
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The full breakdown of the 18 transfers by position is nine strikers (including Shearer twice), six midfielders, two defenders (Ferdinand both times) and one winger.
Clubs
Eight buying clubs have broken the record, with Manchester United leading the way on six (though they have done so only once since 2002).
Of those eight clubs, two have failed to win the Premier League title — Leeds United and Newcastle United. Leicester City are the only Premier League title winners not to have broken the British transfer record at some point since the competition began. The most the 2015-16 champions have spent on a player is the £40m they paid Monaco for Youri Tielemans in July 2019.
Four of the eight have been relegated — Blackburn Rovers, Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester City. Though City, of course, haven’t been relegated since first breaking the record to sign Robinho, whereas the other three clubs all have.
Blackburn, one of four clubs to break the record more than once, did so on strikers Shearer and Chris Sutton in 1992 and 1994 — with the duo forming the deadly ‘SAS’ partnership that propelled Kenny Dalglish’s side to the title in 1994-95.
Meanwhile, Nottingham Forest are the only selling club to be involved in two record-breaking transactions — selling Roy Keane to Manchester United in 1993 and Collymore to Liverpool in 1995. Keane won 17 trophies at his new club, whereas Collymore won none.
Italy’s Inter Milan were the first overseas team to be involved in the record being broken, selling Dennis Bergkamp to Arsenal the same summer Collymore joined Liverpool.
Frequency of record being broken
The year 2023 is one of just three where the record has been broken more than once, with Caicedo’s move surpassing the £106.8m Chelsea paid Benfica for Fernandez in January.
The record was also broken twice in 2001, both times by Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson’s team, who had just become the fourth side to win the English top flight in three consecutive seasons, signed Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy from PSV Eindhoven and then Argentine midfielder Juan Sebastian Veron from Lazio.
The pair couldn’t United secure an unprecedented four titles in a row, however, with Ferguson’s team finishing third behind champions Arsenal and second-placed Liverpool in 2001-02 despite Van Nistelrooy’s 23 league goals in his debut season.
But the highest number of times the record has been broken in a year is three in 1995 when Andy Cole, Bergkamp and Collymore all moved for record fees.
There have been four consecutive calendar years without the record being broken on two occasions, with Manchester United’s signing of Pogba in 2016 ending the first of those streaks and Manchester City’s purchase of Jack Grealish in 2021 the second.
Between Torres’ shock transfer to Chelsea in January 2011 and Grealish’s departure from Aston Villa in the summer of 2021, only the transfer of Pogba from Juventus to Jose Mourinho’s United broke the record.
To put that into context, a new record was set once in 10 and a half years, but has since been broken three times in two years.
The £89m Pogba cost was £39m more than Chelsea paid for Liverpool striker Torres five and a half years previously, which represents the biggest increase in the record, not adjusting for inflation.
Nationalities
The record has been broken by players from nine different countries — but only England (eight), the Netherlands and Argentina (both two) have had players do so more than once.
Keane, from the Republic of Ireland, was the first non-Englishman to hold the record in 1993, before Dutchman Bergkamp became the first who wasn’t British or Irish in 1995. The Arsenal legend was joined in England by compatriot Van Nistelrooy six years later.
Bergkamp finished up with three Premier League winners’ medals and 87 goals in the competition, while Van Nistelrooy won the title once and scored 95 goals.
Fernandez’s transfer to Chelsea this year meant he joined fellow Argentinian Veron in breaking the record, with the latter the first non-European to do so.
No player from outside Europe or South America has broken the record.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
