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.

Marry Ousmane, 18, poses outside while wearing her prom dress on May 29, 2020 in the Brooklyn borough in New York City. Marry Ousmane is best friends with Patrice Toussaint and both are seniors at Edward Murrow high school in Brooklyn whose senior prom was canceled due to all schools being closed during the coronavirus pandemic. Toussaint said, “I've been planning for four years. I was going to have a send off party with a barbecue and a red carpet. I was going to have two dresses and wear a crown”. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

American actress and model Megan Fox nearly busts out of red silk bra as she celebrates 35th birthday with boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly in Santa Monica, California on May 15, 2021. (Photo by Splash News and Pictures)

WWII veterans attend a ceremony to place tobacco pouches of soil from WWII mass graves of Red Army soldiers abroad, in the custody of the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow, Russia on March 6, 2020. The grave soil has been brought from Abkhazia, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, US, Ukraine, France, Estonia, Mongolia, Bulgaria, UK, Uzbekistan and South Ossetia. (Photo by Alexander Shcherbak/TASS)

Thousands flock to Bondi Beach for the traditional expats Christmas Day celebration in Sydney, Australia, 25 December 2014. Expats of all nationalities have been flocking to Bondi Beach for Christmas Day for many years. (Photo by Dean Lewins/EPA)

English actress Liz Hurley, 55, poses topless in the snow in a photo taken by her son in United Kingdom at the end of January 2021. Brit stripped to white bikini bottoms from her own swimwear range and draped herself in a coat. (Photo by Instagram/The Sun)

American media personality Paris Hilton and American television personality Nicole Richie at 20th Century Fox Television USA Television TV Classics in 2003. (Photo by Sam Jones/20th Century Fox TV/Kobal/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

In northwest Russia, in a small village called Alekhovshchina, Nadia Sablin's aunts spend the warmer months together in the family home and live as the family has always lived, chopping wood to heat the house and making their own clothes. Sablin's book of photographs, “Aunties: The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila”, is published by Duke University Press. Here: “Two-Handed Saw, 2014”. (Photo by Nadia Sablin)