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 Nubian ibex roams the streets during a national lockdown in Mitzpe Ramon, southern Israel, 22 January 2021. Although Israel is one of the first countries to have received vaccines and has so far vaccinated more then two million of its around nine million citizens, the rate of infection with the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus, that causes the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), is rising drastically as Israel entered a full closure of two weeks. (Photo by Abir Sultan/EPA/EFE)

In this photo taken on Saturday, April 29, 2017, a candle is lit in a roadside shrine as the sun sets across a nearby lake of Pineia in the village of Souli, in the Peloponnese region of southern Greece. Made of iron sheeting, stone, wood, concrete or marble, tens of thousands of such shrines punctuate Greece’s roadside scenery, a common sight in a country that has one of the European Union’s worst road fatality rates. (Photo by Petros Giannakouris/AP Photo)

Elderly people attend an aquatic exercise at a private pool in Bangkok, Thailand, April 28, 2016. Many Thai families look after elderly relatives at a cost that countrywide adds up to just under a third of household income. The number of families facing this issue will balloon as the population ages at a rate among the fastest in Southeast Asia. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

Workers prepare the roof of a house to get installed solar power modules for producing heat on October 15, 2011 in Wessling, Germany. Germany has and is continuing to invest heavily in solar energy, both in the public and private sectors. The German government introduced a feed-in tariff with its Renewable Energy Act in 2000 that guarantees homeowners a minimum rate for selling electricity from renewable energy sources into the nation's electricity grid. (Photo by Alexandra Beier/Getty Images)

A view of the facade of a house in the village of Cherevkovo, Arkhangelsk region, Russia, July 12, 2016. Traditional wooden houses, many featuring exquisite carvings and craftsmanship, are falling into decay across Russia because of neglect, lack of funds and an exodus from the countryside to the cities. Urbanisation and a low birth rate are emptying out the countryside, and residents and authorities are often largely indifferent towards the historical value of their properties. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

In this March 15, 2012 file photo, a Chinese woman poses for photos near a sculpture depicting a Chinese yuan note at an art district in Beijing, China. China devalued its tightly controlled currency on Tuesday, August 11,2015, following a slump in trade, triggering the yuan's biggest one-day decline in a decade. The central bank said the yuan's 1.3 percent fall was due to a change aimed at making its exchange rate controls more market-oriented. But any change raises the risk of tensions with China's trading partners. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

Bollywood actress and former p*rn star Sunny Leone stands with her wax likeness during its unveiling at the Madame Tussauds museum in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, September 18, 2018. The statue unveiled Tuesday represents the 37-year-old celebrity's acceptance by mainstream Indian society even as conservative Indian politicians condemn her p*rn-star past. (Photo by Anupam Nath/AP Photo)