Members of the Sydney Swans Football Club and LA Rams cheerleaders walk in the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade as part of Sydney WorldPride on February 25, 2023 in Sydney, Australia. The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade returns to Oxford Street in celebration of the event's 45th anniversary. The parade began in 1978 as a march to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York and has been held every year since to promote awareness of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered issues. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

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.

“Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation “The Cellar Tapes”, which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and the duo also played the title roles in Jeeves and Wooster”. – Wikipedia

Photo: English comic Stephen Fry hosts the comedy revue “Hysteria 3” in support of the Terrence Higgins Trust, 1991. (Photo by Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A Bolivian Squirrel monkey plays with a toy football at London Zoo on August 18, 2011 in London, England. Male monkey Bounty has fathered eleven baby monkeys in the last three years since his arrival, enough to make up a football team. His latest offspring named Rolo was the eleventh and arrived last month. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Boys play football in a shantytown of Olinda, about 18 km from Recife in northeastern Brazil, on June 18, 2013 as the FIFA Confederations Cup Brazil 2013 football tournament is being held in the country. The historic centre of Olinda is listed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP Photo)

A woman in a face mask dances inside the club on the opening of the summer season for “Villa delle Rose”, one of the most famous clubs on the Adriatic Coast on June 20, 2020 in Rimini, Italy. The Villa delle Rose is among the first dance clubs to reopen in the Adriatic Riviera after the Covid-19 pandemic. (Photo by Max Cavallari/Getty Images)

South Korean football fans react during a public screening in Seoul of the South Korea vs Russia football match at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, early on June 18, 2014. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

Naked footballers participate in a Germany v Netherlands soccer match in protest against what they say is increasing commercialization of professional football, in Wuppertal, Germany on September 6, 2020. (Photo by Leon Kuegeler/Reuters)