Neymar, Antony, Philippe Coutinho & the most expensive transfer flops in football history - ranked

Just like everyone else in the football world, Real Madrid president Florentino Perez fell in love with the fresh-faced, silky-skilled James Rodriguez during Colombia's run to the quarter-finals of the 2014 World Cup. Given the attacking midfielder with a keen eye for spectacular goals had long dreamed of moving to Santiago Bernabeu, a transfer was inevitable, so James became Perez's latest Galactico.

At times during his first season in Spain, he played like one, ending the 2014-15 campaign with 17 goals in all competitions. However, while Zinedine Zidane's appointment as coach in 2016 proved a crucial turning point in Madrid's modern history, it effectively spelt the end of James' Blancos career. He rarely featured under the Frenchman, who at one point claimed that James had asked to be left out of a game against Athletic Club.

In the end, after a couple of years on loan at Bayern Munich, and a dire final season in which he made just eight appearances, the €80m (£68m/$86m) signing left for nothing – the perfect illustration of just how far his stock had fallen since winning the Golden Boot in Brazil.

As Zlatan Ibrahimovic would be the first to tell you, he's an absolute legend of the game. However, his move to Barcelona ranks as one of the most disastrous deals of all time. Remember, the Blaugrana didn't just pay Inter €69.5m (£59m/$75m) for Ibrahimovic, they also handed over 2009 Champions League hero Samuel Eto'o, who then helped the Nerazzurri win the treble, after eliminating Barca in the semis.

By that stage, the Swede's relationship with then Barca boss Pep Guardiola had completely collapsed, with Ibrahimovic having accused the Catalan of having "no balls" and "sh*tting himself" in front of his former boss Jose Mourinho. The striker's agent, the late Mino Raiola, also labelled Guardiola a "coward" and even went for the coach ahead of the 2012 Champions League final.

It's worth remembering that Ibrahimovic scored 21 goals in all competitions, but what we're talking about here is arguably the greatest personality clash in football history.

At times, Neymar played sensationally well for Paris Saint-Germain, wowing all and sundry with his wonderful array of tricks and flicks. Nonetheless, it would be hard to paint his time at the Parc des Princes as anything other than a failure.

He stepped out of Lionel Messi's shadow to become a superstar in his own right by leading the French club to a first Champions League title. However, the most expensive player of all time was quickly upstaged by Kylian Mbappe and was then joined in Paris by Messi, whose arrival only pushed the Brazilian further from the spotlight.

The Ligue 1 outfit tried to sell Neymar in 2022 before eventually sending him to Saudi Arabia in exchange for a most welcome €90m (£77m/$100m) the following year. Given his continued injury issues in Saudi Arabia, that was a fine fee for PSG.

The most expensive goalkeeper in the world - and yet nowhere near the best. Indeed, Chelsea are still desperately trying to find a buyer for their historic £72m ($94m) signing from Athletic Club in 2018.

The former Spain international was a regular during his first two seasons at Stamford Bridge and actually managed to reclaim his starting spot from Edouard Mendy for the 2022-23 season, but it wasn't long before he slipped down the pecking order once again and he's presently on loan at Bournemouth.

Consequently, his time in west London, which is likely to come to an end sooner rather than later, will probably be best remembered for his antics in the Carabao Cup.

In the 2019 final, he shamefully refused to be subbed, while in the 2022 decider, he was brought on specifically for the penalty shootout but failed to make a single save before skying the decisive spot-kick. Some legacy...

Harry Maguire can be a good Premier League defender. He proved that at Leicester. Remember, even Pep Guardiola wanted to sign him in 2019. Maguire claims that he chose United instead, but the truth is that Manchester City baulked at the price. They simply didn't feel Maguire was worth a world-record fee for a defender, and they were proven correct.

Some of the abuse Maguire received from Manchester United fans during his six years at the club has gone way over "the line", as the centre-back put it himself, and he's actually won over plenty of his critics with his admirable resilience.

However, there's no denying that his spell at Old Trafford has been a dreadful disappointment, and the decision to make him club captain was made to look completely ridiculous by a succession of shocking displays and meme-worthy mistakes.

As if you need reminding, United paid £80m ($100m) for Maguire - and they'll never recoup even a quarter of that fee, given they failed to offload him to West Ham in the summer of 2023.

Consequently, Maguire remains in Manchester and while he may not be completely "sh*t", as Rafael van der Vaart infamously stated, the England international certainly still ranks as a colossal waste of money.

One of only two men to feature on our list twice, Romelu Lukaku first flopped at Manchester United, which was surprising, given he had already proven himself in the Premier League, with both West Brom and Everton.

The Belgian had also hit the ground running at Old Trafford, scoring 10 times in his first nine appearances, breaking a record previously set by the legendary Bobby Charlton. However, Lukaku began to struggle during his second season and, after finally ending a 12-game drought under Jose Mourinho, he saw less and less game time under the Portuguese's successor, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Lukaku feels he was poorly treated by the Norwegian, while many United fans, including Gary Neville, believe he was neither fit nor talented enough to lead the Red Devils attack. The one thing we can all agree on is that the £75m ($94m) fee turned out to be a dreadful bit of business.

Plenty of pundits consider Alvaro Morata's agent the best in the business. How else to explain how a striker who has consistently struggled to score goals continues earning moves to Europe's elite clubs for significant sums of money?

Morata did manage 15 Primera Division goals in 2016-17, which convinced Chelsea to sign him from Real Madrid for £60m ($75m), but it remains his joint-best top-flight haul. Indeed, the Spain international managed just 16 Premier League goals during a miserable 18-month stay at Stamford Bridge, which was cut short in January 2019, when he was allowed to join Atletico Madrid on loan with a view to a permanent transfer.

Morata felt the press were to quick to criticise him during his time in England, but there's no denying that he was a massive disappointment given the size of the outlay.

Antoine Griezmann humiliated Barcelona in 2018 by openly flirting with a €100m (£86m/$107m) transfer to Camp Nou before publicly rejecting them at the end of a video documentary produced by Blaugrana defender Gerard Pique. The fans were furious. They wanted nothing more to do with the Atletico Madrid ace.

Josep Maria Bartomeu, though, inexplicably went back in for Griezmann the following year, agreeing to pay the €120m (£100m/$130m) buy-out clause in the Frenchman's contract, as if determined to prove a point.

The versatile attacker had his moments at Barca, but they were few and far between and he went crawling back to Madrid in 2021, re-joining Atletico on loan before completing a permanent move back to the capital, where he re-established himself as a world-class player, suggesting his struggles at Camp Nou had more to do with Bartomeu's shambolic Barca than any lack of quality or effort on Griezmann's part.

Some diehard Jack Grealish supporters continue to argue that the winger's time at Manchester City should be viewed as a success because he was part of a treble-winning squad at the Etihad. However, while England's most beloved boozehound was the undoubted star of the celebrations that followed, he actually contributed far less to the campaign that preceded them than most people think.

Indeed, a player that once wowed neutrals with his silky skills at Aston Villa was only directly involved in just 16 goals in 50 appearances in 2022-23 and didn't produce one decisive moment in the games that mattered during the final six weeks of the season. Grealish had been touted as a world-class winger and yet his primary role was to give his more important team-mates a breather while he wandered around the left flank drawing fouls.

Unfortunately for Grealish, he doesn't even do that particularly well anymore, as Pep Guardiola has publicly admitted. Consequently, it now seems only a matter of time before City cut their losses on a £100m signing that, at the time of writing, hasn't scored in the Premier League since 2023.

It's still incredible to think that Paris Saint-Germain paid Eintracht Frankfurt €80m for Randal Kolo Muani. The versatile attacker had netted 23 times in 46 appearances in all competitions during the 2022-23 season but he was still an unproven talent at the very highest level. So, why did PSG stump up so much money for Kolo Muani? To keep Kylian Mbappe happy, essentially.

The Qatari-owned club clearly thought that by signing the forward's fellow France international and good friend they might have a better chance of convincing their star forward to resist the advances of Real Madrid and stay at the Parc des Princes. However, PSG's desperation played into Frankfurt's hands during their transfer talks over Kolo Muani, enabling the German side to take the perennial French champions to the cleaners.

Even worse was to follow, because while Kolo Muani continued to enjoy an excellent relationship with Mbappe off the field, they failed to click on it.

He managed just six Ligue 1 goals in his first season in Paris and only two during his second before being sent out on loan to Juventus during the 2025 January transfer window. PSG will now be praying that the 26-year-old does well enough in Turin to persuade the Bianconeri - or someone else - to take Kolo Muani off their hands at the end of the season.

There was a time when it looked like Nicolas Pepe was coming good for Arsenal; a purple patch at the end of the 2020-21 campaign when he looked like the winger that had torn it up in Ligue 1 with Lille.

However, the Ivorian scored one Premier League goal in his final season at the Emirates, his place in the starting line up having long since been taken by younger, better players, making a parting of the ways inevitable.

Arsenal attempted to recoup some of the £79m ($104m) they paid for his services in 2019 but, after an unsurprisingly unsuccessful loan spell at Nice, the beleaguered Gunners allowed him to join Trabzonspor for nothing in the summer of 2023 - even though he still had a year left on his contract. That's how desperate they were to get rid of him!

Joao Felix believed had plenty of offers during the summer of 2019, but he felt that his career would be best served by a move to Atletico Madrid. He could not have been more wrong, with the forward failing dismally to justify his €126m (£113m/$135m) transfer fee.

Felix said at the time that he just wanted to "enjoy" his football, so it remains hard to work out why he elected to play under Diego Simeone, who demands that his attackers work as hard as his midfielders and defenders. Right from the start, this deal just didn't look like a good fit, and so it proved, with Atletico agreeing to let Felix join Chelsea on loan for the remainder of the 2022-23 season, after just 25 goals in 96 Liga appearances.

He did, in the process, extend his contract with the Rojiblancos, but that was only done to try recoup some some money on their record signing at the end of what they hoped would be a successful stint at Stamford Bridge.

Felix managed just four goals in 20 appearances for Chelsea, but even though he also flopped during a subsequent loan stint at Barcelona, the Blues rather inexplicably decided to resign the Portugal international on a permanent basis in the summer of 2024 for £45m.

The fee represented a major loss on Atleti's initial investment, but they didn't care; they were just happy to finally get the forward off their books.

Manchester United lost Paul Pogba for nothing in 2012. Ten years later, it happened again. Make no mistake about it, most fans were delighted to get rid of a player that they'd long since given up on producing his undoubted world-class quality on a consistent basis. Indeed, some irate supporters on the Stretford End not only booed the France midfielder during the Premier League clash with Norwich in April 2022, they also shouted 'F*ck off, Pogba!'

Losing such a valuable asset for nothing still stung, though. United, after all, paid a world-record £89.5m ($117m) to re-sign Pogba from Juventus in 2016. However, after six seasons, one Europa League, one Carabao Cup and a string of pitiful performances and shameful come-and-get-me pleas to rival clubs, Pogba returned from whence he game.

Again, much to most fans' relief - particularly as Juve ended up releasing Pogba after just over 18 months due to a doping ban.

Lukaku said his return to Chelsea was about "unfinished business", given he had failed to score once during his previous stint at Stamford Bridge. However, while he finished the 2021-22 season as the club's top scorer, the striker's second spell proved far worse than his first. Indeed, 15 goals from 44 appearances was a dismal return given the club-record investment of £97.5m ($119m) in his services.

Lukaku only had himself to blame too, for conducting an unsanctioned interview with Sky Sport Italia midway through the season, in which he professed his undying love for former club Inter and, even more incredibly, criticised Thomas Tuchel's tactics. He never really recovered from losing the trust of his coach and the club's supporters, making his loan return to San Siro an inevitability.

However, after once again upsetting Inter fans by conducting secret talks with Juventus over a move to Turin, a proposed permanent switch to Juventus collapsed. Roma eventually took him on loan for the 2023-24 season but decided against buying him outright.

Consequently, he's now trying to finish a once-promisingn career with a flourish at Napoli, under his favourite coach, Antonio Conte.

Antony had looked a promising player during his two full seasons at Ajax and several top European teams had expressed an interest in signing the winger. However, United's decision to pay £82 million ($102m) was staggering, even at the time.

Still, the presumption was that he would flourish in Manchester under his former boss in Amsterdam, Erik ten Haag, who had just taken over at Old Trafford, and in fairness to Antony, there were some flashes of quality during his first season in the Premier League.

However, by the midpoint of his second, it was clear that Antony could do a couple of flicks and tricks - but little else. His performances became increasingly farcical and were used as a stick with which to beat Ten Hag.

It, thus, came as no surprise to see Antony leave United shortly after the Dutchman's dismissal. The problem for United, though, is that they've yet to make any money back on the Brazil international, as they're still paying a significant chunk of wages while he spends the rest of the 2024-25 campaign on loan to Real Betis, who are under no obligation to buy either.

Furthermore, the acquisition of Antony is being held up as the ultimate example of why United are currently in danger of falling foul of the Premier League's Profit & Sustainability Rules (PSR). As this list underlines, they've made a succession of shocking signings over the past decade - and Antony is the worst of a very bad bunch.

PSG couldn't believe their luck when Al-Hilal offered an utterly ridiculous €90m (£77m/$98m) for Neymar - a player that they'd been trying desperately to get rid of for at least a year. Unsurprisingly, no top team in Europe was willing to help the French club recoup such a significant chunk of their original outlay on the Brazilian, as it had been long since made clear to everyone that Neymar was both physically fragile and utterly unprofessional.

One can see why Al-Hilal were willing to spend big on such a high-profile player, but Neymar, perhaps unsurprisingly, proved an atrocious investment. The injury-prone attacker managed just one goal and seven appearances before his contract was cancelled in January 2025 ahead of a return to boyhood club Santos.

One of the most important transfers in Liverpool's history but one of the worst in Barcelona's. The Blaugrana agreed to pay €120m (£100m/$130m) – plus €40m (£34m/$43m) in potential bonuses – for a player that they simply didn't need.

Was he an attacker, a midfielder or something in between? Bartomeu certainly had no idea but he went out of his way to sign the Brazilian regardless. His most significant contribution during his four years on Barca's books was scoring two goals against the Catalans while on loan to Bayern Munich in 2020.

After spending years trying to offload Coutinho, they let him join Aston Villa for just €20m (£17m/$21.5m) in 2022 as they desperately tried to restore some financial order at Camp Nou after very nearly going bankrupt under Bartomeu.

A transfer 10 years in the making, Eden Hazard's €100m (£85m/$111m) move to Real Madrid appeared doomed from the moment the winger turned up overweight for pre-season training.

In fairness to the Belgian, he was also desperately unfortunate with injuries, having had an almost clean bill of health for the duration of his time at Chelsea. However, even when he managed to get a run of games together in Spain, he looked a very cheap imitation of the player who had illuminated the Premier League for seven years.

Hazard has got his hands on some important trophies, including the Champions League, but he played about as much part in Madrid's 2021-22 triumph as Gareth Bale. He left Santiago Bernabeu having never played a single minute of a Clasico, which tells you everything you need to know about the worst signing in Real's history.

The shock loss of Neymar to Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2017 left Barcelona in a tight spot. Yes, they had received a world-record fee for the Brazilian, but every club in the world knew they had money to burn and were desperate for a replacement. Indeed, Dortmund saw Barca coming a mile off, playing hard ball on Ousmane Dembele until the Catalans cracked, making the ultimate panic-buy by handing over an initial €105m (£90m/$112m) for a player with just one good Bundesliga season under his belt.

Dembele didn't just fail dismally to justify his price tag. He repeatedly let the club - and himself - down, right up until the moment he left for PSG just a year after extending his contract. There were constant reports that Dembele's diet was disastrous and that he was playing video games until the early hours of the morning, which led to him arriving late for one team meeting after another. As he admitted himself, he "lost five years" of his life because of his unprofessional lifestyle, which contributed to the umpteen injuries he suffered during his time at Camp Nou.

Barca went out of their way to accommodate Dembele, with club president Joan Laporta arguing that this "genius" of a player deserved "special treatment", resulting in Dembele being given countless chances to prove himself. He never did, though, and infuriated his employers, his coach and the club's supporters by absconding to Paris having never once managed to hit double figures in a single Liga season.