Ronaldo, Mbappe, Neymar: The 22 most expensive signings in football history ranked

The summer transfer window is officially open and that means we can start expecting some lucrative player transfers in the coming weeks.

We’ve already seen Aurélien Tchouameni sign on the dotted line with Real Madrid in a deal worth £72 million, a figure that makes him the 24th most expensive signing ever.

Whereas it seems in the coming days we can expect Darwin Nunez to become a Liverpool player for a reported £68 million initial fee, with performance related bonuses potentially seeing that figure rise to as much as £85 million.

But how often do these enormous transfers actually go to plan? Well, we’ve been looking through some of the most expensive deals ever and you’d be surprised how infrequently they work out as expected.

Our research got us settled on the rather odd number of the 22 most expensive signings of all-time and we’ve ranked them from the worst deal ever, to the very best.

Check out what we came up with below.

All figures and therefore qualifying players are courtesy of transfermarkt.

22. Phillipe Coutinho (Liverpool to Barcelona) – £121.5m 21. Antoine Griezmann (Atletico to Barcelona) – £108m 20. Eden Hazard (Chelsea to Real Madrid) – £103.5m 19. Ousmane Dembele (Dortmund to Barcelona) – £126m

A Barcelona graveyard, Coutinho and Griezmann were both sold for a combined loss of over £150 million after their hugely expensive transfers ended in bitter disappointment.

Whereas Dembele could be set to leave the club on a free this summer despite joining for a mammoth £126 million fee.

18. Romelu Lukaku (Inter Milan to Chelsea) – £101.7m17. Jadon Sancho (Dortmund to Man Utd) – £76.5m 16. Harry Maguire (Leicester to Man Utd) – £78.3m 15. Frenkie de Jong (Ajax to Barcelona) – £77.4m

So, the onus switches