Football has now become a money-making venture. Twenty years ago, football was a hobby or a recreational game, but fast forward, and the game has become a multimillion-dollar business. Clubs can spend a whopping amount on a player, and later the player will flop or get injured, while others go on to exceed expectations. Check out some of these overrated players who became flops and those who exceeded expectations.
10) Ruben Dias (Benfica to Manchester City, 2020)
Fee: £65m
Transfer market's valuation at the time was £30m
Clearly, there was a massive undervaluing of Dias, likely based on his being in a league outside of the big five. Three Premier League titles later, it turns out that he was more than worth the money, but Benfica undoubtedly added a few million when they saw City torn apart by Leicester City just a few days before the transfer. “This is the guy to replace Vincent Kompany, if you like. £65m is a huge figure again, but if this doesn’t work, I think it’s possibly the end of the Pep project,” said Jamie Carragher at the time. SPOILER: It was not the end of the Pep project.
9)Harry Maguire (Leicester City to Manchester United, 2019)
Fee: £80m
Transfer market's valuation at the time was £43m
It looked like stupid money at the time, and it looks like really stupid money four years later, with Maguire coincidentally available for about the price that United should have paid. Honestly, Maguire hasn't live up to that price tag.
8) Marc Cucurella (Brighton to Chelsea, 2022)
Fee: £55m
Transfer market's valuation at the time was £24m
Brighton can pretty much name their price when it comes to player sales (unless it’s Alexis Mac Allister and he has just won the World Cup and had a clause inserted into his contract), and they absolutely saw Chelsea coming when it came to the Spanish one-cap man. He has looked entirely out of his depth at Chelsea, whether playing at left-back, left wing-back, or left-sided center-back. Like the overpriced man above, Manchester City rather cleverly helped drive up the price before dropping out of the race.
7) Alexander Isak (Real Sociedad to Newcastle United, 2022)
Fee: £60m
Transfer Market's valuation at the time was £25.78 million.
6) Aymeric Laporte (Athletic Bilbao to Manchester City, 2018)
Fee: £57m
Transfer market valuation at the time: £21.4m
A club-record deal, was determined by a buy-out clause, and Manchester City obviously decided that they needed to make that investment (after backing out of the Virgil van Dijk race) at a time when Nicolas Otamendi was seen as their only really reliable center-half. Laporte was likely undervalued because he was uncapped. After starting only 11 Premier League games last season, the Frenchman turned Spain international is now very much up for sale.
5) Wesley Fofana (Leicester City to Chelsea, 2022)
Fee: £70m
Transfermarket valuation at the time: £34.3m
It took three rejected Chelsea bids—worth £50m, £60m, and finally £70m with add-ons included—before Leicester finally caved and accepted up to £75m for a defender with 57 top-flight career league appearances. You will have gathered by now that a) the transfer market undervalues defenders, but also that b) Leicester City used to own all of the cards.
4) Jack Grealish (Aston Villa to Manchester City, 2021)
Fee: £100m
Transfer market's valuation at the time: £55.86m
The price was the price set in Jack Grealish’s Aston Villa contract. Was it too much at the time for what Grealish had actually achieved? Probably yes. Does it still look too much with a triple in the bag? It’s borderline. There’s no doubt that he struggled under the weight of being British football’s most expensive footballer and was probably glad to hand over that particular baton to the man at the top or bottom of this list. But frankly speaking, Grealish has lived up to the price tag during the latter part of the season.
3) Virgil van Dijk (Southampton to Liverpool, 2018)
Fee: £75m
Transfer market's valuation at the time: £25.8m
While clearly that was a ludicrous valuation, Liverpool paid a January tax on Van Dijk because they had overstepped the mark in the summer when they pursued him in a £60 million deal. Obviously, the record (for a defender) fee has been more than justified since, but it was still an eyewatering sum of money for a player yet to play at an elite level. And it opened the door for Leicester to name their price for their own center-halves. Van Dijk has since won every trophy available with Liverpool.
2) Antony (Ajax to Manchester United, 2022)
Fee: £81m
Transfer market's valuation at the time was £30m
Ajax declared that Antony would not be sold early in the summer window and thought a £68 million price tag would put off Manchester United and their former boss Erik ten Hag. So what did Manchester United do? They started the season disastrously and panicked into paying £80 million or more for the tricky winger. And it’s that kind of deal that will see United pay for a striker this summer.
1) Enzo Fernandez (Benfica to Chelsea, 2023)
Fee: £106.8m
Transfer market's valuation at the time was £47.2m
A combination of January, Chelsea being giddy, a World Cup medal or Golden Boy trophy, and a ridiculous buy-out clause for a player bought for just £12 million a few months before made this not only a British transfer record but the biggest Premier League overpay of all time. He has looked okay in a Chelsea shirt, but not yet £106.8 million okay; is that even possible?
In case you’re interested, Neymar and Ousmane Dembele are the only players across Europe whose ‘value’ was blown out of the water by their transfer fees to an even greater extent.
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