The 50 most important transfers of all time (20-11)

FT Desk

• Updated: 23 May 2023 08:55 CDT
• 11 min read

So here it is, the 50 most important transfers in football history.

FootballTransfers global team of experts - including Paul Macdonald, Robin Bairner, Carlo Garganese, Stefan Bienkowski, Martin Macdonald and Ronan Murphy – considered every major and noteworthy transfer dating back to the end of the nineteenth century.

We focused on influential, legacy-making transfers that changed or had a huge impact on the beautiful game.

It could because of a record-breaking or history-making transfer fee. It could be a transfer that broke down a social or cultural or racial barrier. It could be a transfer that transformed the fortunes of a team and led to a period of dominance. It could be a transfer that simply transcended the sport.

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Our team of experts compiled a shortlist before voting on their most important transfers of all time. We added up all the votes to form a list of the top 50.

Only transfers that actually took place were considered, so we did not include Jean-Marc Bosman himself.

Youth transfers also were discarded, only first-team to first-team deals are allowed.

Therefore, Lionel Messi’s move to Barcelona as a young kid does not count.

We have five articles counting down the top 50: 50-41, 40-31, 30-21, 20-11 and then finally 10-1.

In this article, we will reveal those placed 20 to 11.

READ MORE: The 50 most important transfers of all time (50-41)

READ MORE: The 50 most important transfers of all time (40-31)

READ MORE: The 50 most important transfers of all time (30-21)

READ MORE: The 50 most important transfers of all time (10-1)

20. Zlatan Ibrahimovic

THE TRANSFER: Milan to PSG - £19m (2011)

THE BACKGROUND: PSG's new super-rich Qatari owners planned to build the best team in the world. The arrival of Zlatan set the scene for that.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) bought PSG in 2011 and immediately transformed the club into the richest team in world football along with Manchester City. Funded with direct links to the Emir of Qatar, the plan was to make PSG the dominant team not only in France but in Europe. But first of all PSG needed a landmark signing to light the fire. That signing was Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who arrived along with another world-class Milan player, Thiago Silva, in the summer of 2012. Superstar after superstar followed thereafter. By 2017, Zlatan was gone when PSG spent €180 million on Kylian Mbappe and €222m to smash the world transfer record for Neymar. In over a decade since QSI’s arrival, PSG have spent well over €1 billion. The Champions League has still eluded them but PSG are now one of the powerhouses of European football.

THE LEGACY: Zlatan will be remembered as a trailblazing, larger than life player in Paris and someone who was the first big building block in QSI's PSG empire.

19. Roberto Baggio

— ACF Fiorentina English (@ACFFiorentinaEN) April 6, 2020

THE TRANSFER: Fiorentina to Juventus - £8m (1990)

THE BACKGROUND: Roberto Baggio leaves Fiorentina for bitter rivals Juventus and all hell breaks out on the streets of Florence.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: The rivalry between Fiorentina and Juventus really exploded during the final day of the 1981-82 Serie A season when Juve controversially overtook the Viola to win the Scudetto. That provided the backdrop to what would occur eight years later when Fiorentina president Flavio Pontello accepted a world record transfer bid from Juventus for the best young player on the planet in Roberto Baggio. Fiorentina fans were up in arms when they heard the news and rioted on the streets of Florence for two days. They caused untold damage to the city, with over 50 people injured and Pontello even bunkering himself in Fiorentina’s Stadio Franchi to hide from angry supporters. Baggio himself never really wanted to make the transfer and on his first game back at the Franchi the next season he refused to take a penalty. Baggio would go on to become the best player in the world and win the Ballon d’Or in Turin.

THE LEGACY: This transfer showed the power yielded by organised fan groups and that clubs have to be very careful how they sell players and to whom.

18. Radamel Falcao

THE TRANSFER: Atletico to Monaco - £55m (2013)

THE BACKGROUND: Radamel Falcao leaves Atletico Madrid largely against his will to sign for the newly-rich Monaco in Ligue 1.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: This deal was less about the impact of the transfer itself and rather an insight into the third-party ownership culture of which Falcao had become a central part. His move to Monaco, as quoted by him, was against his will. 'I sometimes want to go to one club and yet end up at another' tells you everything you need about how much agency Falcao has had over his own career. It's thought Atletico, as his club, were entitled to less than 40% of this transfer fee, such were the other invested parties. This deal represents that side of football that wasn't properly regulated then, and only now are we getting into a position to do something about it.

THE LEGACY: Third party ownership, and how broken the transfer market had become.

17. Kylian Mbappe

THE TRANSFER: Monaco to PSG - £130.5m (2018)

THE BACKGROUND: The most brilliant young player in the world rejects the rest of Europe to stay in Ligue 1 and join PSG's mega-project.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: When Mbappe burst onto the scene it was a case of wondering who would get him, and despite PSG's ludicrous wealth it was still a huge shock when he chose to join them at the expense of the rest of Europe's elite. If PSG had gone for Mbappe alone and allowed him to work his magic within a logical formation rather than pair him with countless other attackers he was forced to engage with, his time at PSG might have been more fruitful in terms of European honours. But he has also suitably progressed during his time in the French capital to the point where the next move - Real Madrid, probably, could reap the best years of an undeniable talent.

THE LEGACY: The future best player in the world choosing to play his peak years in France was, and remains, a surprise and somewhat of a lost opportunity.

16. Ronaldinho

THE TRANSFER: PSG to Barcelona - £25m (2003)

THE BACKGROUND: The modern Barcelona begins as Ronaldinho moves from PSG for a £25m fee.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: Given what Barcelona became it's easy to forget how pitiful they were in 2003. The season before they won just 15 of 38 league games as they finished a woeful sixth in La Liga. But Joan Laporta arrived as president and brought in Ronaldinho to give an ailing team its first proper superstar since Rivaldo. And boy, did he make something special. Before Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi started destroying numbers, the sheer joy of watching Ronaldinho in action hadn't been seen since Diego Maradona. For some, the 2004-2006 spell of him at his best is as good as it gets.

THE LEGACY: The first modern contender for greatest player ever, even if we didn't quite get enough of him at his true peak.

15. Ronaldo

THE TRANSFER: Barcelona to Inter - £24m (1997)

THE BACKGROUND: Inter swoop in to break the world transfer record and lure Ronaldo to Italy while Barcelona weren't looking.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: Ronaldo's 1996/97 season at Barcelona is one of the greatest individual seasons you'll ever see; a player who seemed to be operating at a totally different level as he bombarded defences with unfeasible dribbling and devastating finishing. And after his unlikely move to Inter he had a similarly seismic impact in a league where it was notoriously difficult to score - for others, not for him. And yet the double knee blowout he suffered stopped his career in his tracks. Given the problems he had, it might have happened anyway. But what if it didn't? Ronaldo is already considered a great, and we barely got the best of him.

THE LEGACY: One of the greatest ever could have been the greatest, had things worked out just a little differently.

14. Thierry Henry

THE TRANSFER: Juventus to Arsenal - £11m (1999)

THE BACKGROUND: Thierry Henry, largely a failure at Juventus, swaps Serie A for the Premier League and Arsenal.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: Thierry Henry the winger was not yet Henry the centre-forward, but it was the transfer that created one of the best players the Premier League has ever seen. Henry was given the platform to rediscover his confidence and showcase his undeniable talents. And while he had to move on to Barcelona to get his Champions League title, English football got to see the best of him; pace, skill, and unbelievable finishing prowess that virtually single-handedly took Arsenal to a totally new level.

THE LEGACY: One of the greatest PL players ever - something that was difficult to envisage after his troubles at Juventus.

13. Lionel Messi

THE TRANSFER: Barcelona to PSG - Bosman (2003)

THE BACKGROUND: The player who would never leave; Lionel Messi is forced to exit Barcelona for free, where he is snapped up by PSG.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: The deal that should have been impossible eventually became unavoidable. Messi's astonishing salary combined with Barcelona's wider financial problems culminated in a tearful press conference where the Argentine made it clear he didn't want to be leaving, but the money he had already extracted from the club had already done its damage. He ended one of the most successful eras of any player ever and in the process arrived at another totally dysfunctional club where, so far at least, it has not worked out at all well.

THE LEGACY: The biggest indictment of the mess that Barcelona found themselves in is the fact that Messi was forced to walk away for free.

12. Ruud Gullit & Marco Van Basten

THE TRANSFER: PSV/Ajax to Milan - (1987)

THE BACKGROUND: Silvio Berlusconi splashes the cash on Dutch football's two biggest stars and they are the catalyst as Milan go on to dominate Europe for the next eight years.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: In 1986, billionaire entrepreneur and future Italy prime minister Silvio Berlusconi saves a Milan team that had twice been relegated to Serie A that decade from bankruptcy. He immediately spent money in a way never seen before in European football. The two jewels of his new project are Gullit and Van Basten. They immediately help propel Milan to a first Scudetto in eight years in their first season. Joined by a third Dutchman in Frank Rijkaard, the following season Milan won a first European Cup in 20 years. Part of a revolutionary high-pressing Arrigo Sacchi side that tore up the Italian school of defensive football, a brilliant Milan team also featuring Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi would retain the European Cup in 1990 and become the dominant team in Italian football into the mid-1990s.

THE LEGACY: Their Milan side is remembered along with Pep Guardiola's Barcelona as arguably the greatest and most revolutionary club team in modern football history.

11. Philippe Coutinho

THE TRANSFER: Liverpool to Barcelona - £145m (2018)

THE BACKGROUND: Barcelona take the majority of their Neymar cash and spend it on Philippe Coutinho, for a gigantic fee.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: Arguably the single biggest flop transfer of all time, Coutinho's transfer legacy doesn't stem from what he actually did on the pitch, but rather the ripple effect that this transfer caused. Coutinho was never going to work while Lionel Messi was there, and his confidence was clearly shattered during his time at Camp Nou, spending spells on loan as Barca didn't know what to do with him. But this deal combined with the money wasted on Ousmane Dembele was the beginning of Barca's demise, while simultaneously strengthening Liverpool as they signed Alisson and Virgil van Dijk with the money.

THE LEGACY: Barcelona spiral into debt while Liverpool return to being a European powerhouse, all from this one deal.