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 veterinarian inspects a cow for foot-mouth-disease ahead of Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice marking the end of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and commemorates Prophet Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son to show obedience to Allah, at a cowshed in Lambaro, Aceh province on July 7, 2022. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP Photo)

A Rohingya refugee bathes at a temporary shelter after arriving by boat in Laweueng, Aceh province on December 27, 2022. Rohingya refugees received emergency medical treatment after a boat carrying nearly 200 people came ashore in Indonesia on December 27, authorities said, in the fourth such landing in the country in recent months. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP Photo)

Protester Lauren Digioia wears police tape during an Occupy Wall Street protest in Union Square on March 19, 2012 in New York City. Protesters affiliated with the movement are gathering in Union Square today following 73 arrests at a six-month anniversary rally at Zuccotti Park over the weekend. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Photographers take photographs of the Large Air Tanker (LAT) C-130 Hercules, also known as “Thor”, as it drops a load of around 15,000 litres during a display by the Rural Fire Service ahead of the bushfire season at RAAF Base Richmond Sydney, Australia, September 1, 2017. (Photo by David Gray/Reuters)

The homemade Airbus A320 jet plane made by Chinese farmer Zhu Yue is being built at an open space in Kaiyuan city, northeast China's Liaoning province on February 4, 2018. (Photo by Imaginechina/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Makeup artist He Yuhong, also known as “Yuya”, checks herself in the mirror during a photo shoot following her transformation into the “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, the 17th century oil painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, at her house in Chongqing, China on August 14, 2018. (Photo by Thomas Suen/Reuters)