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.

Russian soldiers from 34th motorized infantry mountain brigade, 58th Army, prepare to evacuate a fellow soldier acting as an injured person during a drill at the Darial range outside Russia's city of Vladikavkaz, July 28, 2010. (Photo by Kazbek Basayev/Reuters)

Singer Rihanna prepares for a photoshoot with photographer Annie Leibovitz in Havana, Cuba, May 28, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Visitors throw colored powder over each other as they attend the 9th annual festival Day of India in Moscow, Russia, 15 August 2024. The festival Day of India is a colorful celebration of Indian culture. The event kicked off on India's Independence Day and will continue until 18 August 2024. India declared its independence from British rule on 15 August 1947. (Phoot by Yuri Kochetkov/EPA)

In this May 17, 2015, photo, two men walk past pagodas at Ngwe Saung beach, Pathein township, about 145 miles from Yangon, Myanmar. (Photo by Khin Maung Win/AP Photo)

A gravedigger competes as a boy looks on during the first National Grave Digging competition at the public cemetery of Debrecen, 226 km east of Budapest, Hungary, Friday, June 3, 2016. Eighteen two-man teams of Hungarian gravediggers are demonstrating their skills for a place in a regional championship to be held in Slovakia. (Photo by Zsolt Czegledi/MTI via AP Photo)

Polar bear twins make their first public appearance with their mother “Freedom” at Ouwehands Zoo Rhenen, in Rhenen, The Netherlands, 19 February 2015. The twins, who were born in November 2014, have not been named because their gender has not yet been determined. (Photo by Bart Maat/EPA)