1940s to 2010s: Evolution of record transfer fees in every decade

Transfer fees have always been an important topic of discussion. The amount of inflation in the prices of players has gone up by leaps and bounds as the money in the game has increased substantially over time. Record transfers in the 1940s used to be thousands of pounds while today it is reaching triple figures in millions of pounds.

Zinedine Zidane moved from Juventus to Real Madrid in 2001 for £53 million while Jadon Sancho after a single brilliant season in the Bundesliga is being valued at a minimum of £100 million by Borussia Dortmund.

The current transfer market has exploded especially since the double deals conducted by Paris-Saint Germain to sign Neymar from FC Barcelona for £198 million and Kylian Mbappe from AS Monaco for £160 million. Such fees were unthinkable even a decade ago when Cristiano Ronaldo moved to Real Madrid from Manchester United for £80 million.

It would be interesting to observe how transfer fees has evolved over time.Here in this article, we take a look at the costliest transfer that occurred in each decade since the 1940s to this date

1940s: Eddie Quigley (1949)

The record transfer fee in the 1940s was held by Englishman Eddie Quigley who sealed a move from Sheffield Wednesday to Preston for £26,500 where the striker stayed for a couple of seasons before moving on to Blackburn Rovers as he could not settle down well there with his strike partner Tom Finney.

1950s: Omar Sivori (1957)

After a series of big money transfers in that decade, it was Enrique Omar Sivori, an Italian Argentinian striker who completed a record transfer move from River Plate to Juventus in 1959 for £93,000. He had a brilliant time with The Old Lady where he scored 161 goals in 247 appearances for the club.