Football transfers are not cheap. To have a player strengthen their ranks, teams are willing to pay big money. The football transfer considered to be the most expensive in the sport's history was that of Gareth Bale leaving Tottenham to play at Real Madrid. The Spanish club paid not less than £86 million (about $133 million at today's exchange rates) to have the player among its own. But recent news suggest that this record might be broken this year. According to reports in the media, UK Premier League team Manchester United is willing to almost double that amount.

A couple passes the sculpture “Transformer” by Chinese artist Bi Heng during snowfall in Kassel, central Germany, Tuesday March 12, 2013. Frankfurt airport closed, a quarter of flights out of Paris were canceled, Belgium suffered record traffic jams and high-speed trains were stuck in stations – all because of a sudden dump of oddly late snowfall on Western Europe. Less prepared for the kind of heavy snow that regularly hits northern and eastern neighbors, France, Britain and Belgium struggled Tuesday to keep moving amid the frosty, blustery conditions. (Photo by Uwe Zucchi/AP Photo/Dpa)

Young cheetahs eat meat at The Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) center in Otjiwarongo, Namibia, on August 13, 2013. The CCF started breeding Anatolian livestock dogs to promote cheetah-friendly farming after some 10,000 big cats – the current total worldwide population – were killed or moved off farms in the 1980s. Up to 1,000 cheetahs were being killed a year, mostly by farmers who saw them as livestock killers. But the use of dogs has slashed losses for sheep and goat farmers and led to less retaliation against the vulnerable cheetah. (Photo by Jennifer Bruce/AFP Photo)

Rush-hour in Russia means one thing for this daredevil: train surfing! The 19-year-old daredevil who goes by the name Kobzarro started train surfing aged 15 as a way of escaping an oppressive family life. Here Kobzarro can be seen balanced on top of a train as it speeds through the wintery Russian environment. Kobzarro is so dedicated to train surfing that she rarely gets inside a train. Even in winter she prefers to travel in this less conventional way. It has resulted in a few run ins with the law, but Kobzarro says it has never resulted in anything more serious than a fine, with many police officers even being interested in the train surfing community. (Photo by Caters News Agency)

Serra da Aboboreira Megalithic Set (Meninas do Crasto) on September 24, 2023 in Baiao, Portugal. Since 1978 that Serra da Aboboreira (Aboboreira Mountains) has been the scene of a systematic study of its archeological values, among which are the monuments known as megalithic. These are funerary monuments designing the landscape. These dolmens were constructed with stones (lithos) of medium or large dimensions (mega), which were laid in a, more or less, vertical position. Over these, it was still placed a lid, also of stone. These containers were covered by an artificial mound of earth and stones (dolmen). (Photo by Octavio Passos/Getty Images)

A girl looks at other children practicing on a boxing ring during an exercise session at a boxing school, in the Mare favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 2, 2016. For many young residents the Luta Pela Paz (Fight For Peace) academy offers a glimpse of an alternative: a chance to build discipline and self-esteem through boxing and martial arts. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

Every year, participants in the Burning Man Festival descend on the playa of Nevada's Black Rock Desert to form a temporary city – a self-reliant community populated by performers, artists, free spirits, and more. Last week, an estimated 68,000 people came to Burning Man 2013 from all over the world to dance, express themselves, and take in the spectacle. Gathered below are some of the sights from the festival, which lasted a week and came to its conclusion yesterday

Japan Self-Defense Force members pay their respect to unidentified earthquake victims in vehicles during a mess funeral on April 8, 2011 in Yamamoto, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. The 9.0 magnitude strong earthquake struck offshore on March 11 at 2:46pm local time, triggering a tsunami wave of up to ten metres which engulfed large parts of north-eastern Japan, and also damaging the Fukushima nuclear plant and threatening a nuclear catastrophe. The death toll continues to rise with numbers of dead and missing exceeding 20,000 in a tragedy not seen since World War II in Japan. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Getty Images)