Transfer mayhem! Why Premier League teams are taking huge €100m gambles on rising stars

Dom Farrell

Transfer mayhem! Why Premier League teams are taking huge €100m gambles on rising stars image

It's more than a decade since Wales and Real Madrid great Gareth Bale became the first €100 million player in football history.

Bale had just won his second PFA Players' Player of the Year award in the space of three seasons. He was unquestionably a leading light in the Premier League and had memorable breakout Champions League performances for Tottenham against Inter Milan thrown into the bargain.

It was enough to persuade Real Madrid that Bale ticked the requisite galactico boxes and Florentino Perez stumped up for a landmark transfer fee.

In January 2023, Bale retired. In the 10 years since his move to Spain, a handful of players have joined him in the €100m club. From Neymar to Kylian Mbappe and Paul Pogba, these were generally players with indisputable talent, huge achievements or both behind them. Sure things don't exist in football transfers, but spending €100m — or, in a few cases, an awful lot more — was supposed to be as close to a guarantee as you could imagine.

Recently, there has been a change in emphasis. Chelsea pipped Arsenal to the signature of highly rated Shakhtar Donetsk winger Mykhailo Mudryk in a deal that has something in common with Antony and Darwin Nunez's moves to Manchester United and Liverpool respectively.

MORE: Watch every Premier League match live with fuboTV in Canada

Football transfers worth €100m and more

Player Selling club Buying club Year Transfer value
Neymar Barcelona PSG 2017 €222m
Kylian Mbappe Monaco PSG 2018 €180m
Philippe Coutinho Liverpool Barcelona 2018 €145m*
Ousmane Dembele Borussia Dortmund Barcelona 2017 €145m*
Joao Felix Benfica Atletico Madrid 2019 €126m
Antoine Griezmann Atletico Madrid Barcelona 2019 €120m
Jack Grealish  Aston Villa Man City 2021 €118m
Romelu Lukaku Inter Milan Chelsea 2021 €115m
Cristiano Ronaldo Real Madrid Juventus 2018 €112m
Paul Pogba Juventus Man United 2016 €105m
Gareth Bale Tottenham Real Madrid 2013 €101m
Eden Hazard Chelsea Real Madrid 2019 €100m
Aurelien Tchouameni Monaco Real Madrid 2022 €100m*
Darwin Nunez Benfica Liverpool 2022 €100m*
Antony Ajax Man United 2022 €100m*
Mykhailo Mudryk Shakhtar Donetsk Chelsea 2023 €100m*

fees as per footballtransfers.com

*Potential total transfer fee including add-ons

The Premier League heavyweights had all signed off on deals potentially worth €100m, once various add-ons are factored in. These are all transfers that secured players with obvious talent and exciting potential, but little in the way of achievement or experience.

Earlier in the month, Chelsea briefly looked poised to make Argentina World Cup winner Enzo Fernandez the most expensive player in British football history by meeting his €120m release clause at Benfica. Fernandez only moved to Europe from River Plate last summer.

As Nunez and Mudryk prepare to face each other in this weekend's clash between Liverpool and Chelsea at Anfield, it feels like a good time to ask what's going on.

MORE: Premier League biggest transfers: Where does Mykhailo Mudryk rank?

Have Chelsea broken the transfer market?

Despite Todd Boehly's maverick and often perplexing manoeuvrings, the answer is no. According to The Athletic, Chelsea beat Arsenal to Mudryk due to how they agreed to structure the deal, with their add-ons to reach €100m "more achievable and realistic".

This means Arsenal were also willing to sanction a similar outlay for the player. In contrast to Boehly's fledgling Chelsea regime, Arsenal's football operation has become one of the most respected in the Premier League. They are not viewed as lavish spenders and the virtues of a club working to a clear plan in line with the manager's vision is currently there for all to see at the top of the table.

Mudryk, like Nunez and Antony, had played fewer than 60 games in a European top division before joining the €100m club. Increasingly, clubs are paying a premium for potential.

Mykhaylo Mudryk Shakhtar Donetsk UEFA Champions League 102522
getty image

Ahead of last weekend's Manchester derby, ESPN examined Antony's move to United. According to the report, Old Trafford sources conceded they had overpaid for the 22-year-old Brazil international but applied logic to the decision.

Firstly, manager Erik ten Hag knew Antony from his time at Ajax and is convinced he has huge potential to improve. Another reason offered in mitigation was United's expectation that other leading clubs in England and Europe could enter bidding wars for players of Antony's profile in 2023, thereby driving his price up further.

European top-flight appearances

Player League Appearances Goals Assists
Darwin Nunez Primeira Liga 57 32 14
Antony Eredivisie 57 18 13
Mykhailo Mudryk Ukrainian Premier League 39 9 13
Enzo Fernandez Primeira Liga 15 1 3

*as per Transfermarkt

Has the Premier League broken the transfer market?

Not to come over all Andrea Agnelli, but sort of, yes.

There has never been more money in elite football, nor has there ever been a higher concentration of that finance within an elite few.

The doomed European Super League project was a landgrab motivated in part by those prestige clubs outside England trying to keep up with the might of the Premier League.

Deloitte published its latest Football Money League this week. Eleven of the top 20 were Premier League clubs. Arsenal are back into the top 10 ahead of Juventus despite not playing any European football last season. Serie A champions AC Milan come in 16th, a place below West Ham.

This is not to suggest major clubs outside England have been helpless victims over recent years. Barcelona offer the most staggering example of horrific financial mismanagement that has compounded this divide.

Nevertheless, the outcome is a transfer window in which, by January 20, Premier League clubs had already shelled out more than €350m and the Bundesliga is the only other of the 'big five' divisions to break €40m.

Top 5 leagues January 2023 transfer expenditure 

Division Expenditure
Premier League €352.9m
Bundesliga €34m
LaLiga €22.1m
Serie A €9.1m
Ligue 1 €8.3m

*as per Transfermarkt on 20/01/2023

This creates a perfect storm for selling clubs. They know Premier League sides have money to burn, while the likes of United are aware — as they admitted after signing Antony — that rivals with similar financial means will also be up to speed on their own targets due to advanced scouting networks.

The upshot is clubs paying a premium for potential.

MORE: Premier League transfer spending rankings for January window 2023

Is there a lost generation in elite football?

Of course, paying over the odds for the next generation might be preferable to the alternative of trying to prise established players at the peak of their powers away from their current employers.

The Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo era is belatedly coming to an end, with Messi crowned world champion and Ronaldo taking a lucrative step towards retirement in Saudi Arabia.

It is notable that the men who have broken the duo's vice-like grip on football's major individual awards are Luka Modric, Robert Lewandowski and Karim Benzema, three more sublime performers in their mid 30s.

Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland, each 22, are the presumed heirs as opposed to more experienced players in what should be their prime years. The hottest properties on the coming summer market alongside Fernandez (22) are likely to be Borussia Dortmund midfielder Jude Bellingham (19) and Napoli winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (21).

This cyclical anomaly is another factor that is driving the well-monied few in the Premier League to invest in the stars of tomorrow.

Dom Farrell

Dom Farrell Photo

Dom is the senior content producer for Sporting News UK. He previously worked as fan brands editor for Manchester City at Reach Plc. Prior to that, he built more than a decade of experience in the sports journalism industry, primarily for the Stats Perform and Press Association news agencies. Dom has covered major football events on location, including the entirety of Euro 2016 and the 2018 World Cup in Paris and St Petersburg respectively, along with numerous high-profile Premier League, Champions League and England international matches. Cricket and boxing are his other major sporting passions and he has covered the likes of Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury, Wladimir Klitschko, Gennadiy Golovkin and Vasyl Lomachenko live from ringside.