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.

Masked participants stand in St.Mark's Square during the Carnival on February 10, 2007 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro). P.S. All pictures are presented in high resolution.

A performer is covered in chocolate sauce at the Notting Hill Carnival on August 28, 2011 in London, England. The annual carnival, which is the largest of it's kind in Europe and is expected to attract around 1 million revellers, has taken place every August Bank Holiday since 1966. (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

Samba dancers walk past a security staff member during the 34th annual Asakusa Samba Carnival in Tokyo August 29, 2015. About 5,000 people participated in the annual samba carnival on Saturday. (Photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters)

A masked reveller poses along the flooded St. Mark's Square during a period of seasonal high water and on the first day of carnival, in Venice February 1, 2015. (Photo by Stefano Rellandini/Reuters)

A man from the Dominican Republic wears a devil mask while dancing in the street during Carnival celebrations in Panama City, Monday, February 16, 2015. (Photo by Arnulfo Franco/AP Photo)

Performers in costume perform in the rain during the parade on the second day of the Notting Hill Carnival in west London on August 31, 2015. Nearly one million people are expected by the organizers Sunday and Monday in the streets of west London's Notting Hill to celebrate Caribbean culture at a carnival considered the largest street demonstration in Europe. The Notting Hill Carnival started in the 1960s, when the area had a large population of immigrants recently arrived from the Caribbean and was notorious for its slums – a far cry from today when it is one of London's most expensive places to live. (Photo by Leon Neal/AFP Photo)

A rose lies on a plastic sheet covering a victim of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 plane which was downed on Thursday near the village of Rozsypne, in the Donetsk region July 18, 2014. International prosecutors investigating the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 say the missile that hit the plane was fired from territory controlled by Russian-backed rebels. They said the missile launcher was brought into Ukraine from Russia. All 298 people on board the Boeing 777 died when it broke apart in midair flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The JIT investigation's findings are meant to prepare the ground for a criminal trial. (Photo by Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)