Inflation is a fact of economics, and in football, too. Players seem to be costing more and more by the year, and the CIES Football Observatory has released the latest values.
Neymar’s move to Paris Saint-Germain from Barcelona in the summer of 2017 for £198million changed the face of football transfers forever.
It wasn’t so long ago that the top players in the world cost less than £50m. In fact, Zinedine Zidane’s transfer record of £48million when he joined Real Madrid from Juventus stood for eight years.
But Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, Paul Pogba and of course Neymar have all held the record in the same amount of time since.
Now, here are CIES’ valuations of each top player in every position.
While Lionel Messi is widely regarded as the world’s best player and possibly the greatest of all time, value has a lot to do with age and, at 31, he is some way down the pecking order. Neymar’s PSG teammate is the most expensive player in the world, at £216million. Harry Kane, and Mohamed Salah are also at the top of the list.
The position of a player also has a huge impact on value. The only other position with a player with a nine figure price tag is midfield, with Dele Alli at £160million ahead of Kevin De Bruyne and Paul Pogba.
The figure is calculated by taking how long a player has on their contract.
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