Footballers are getting younger: we all know that. Yet when Newcastle United were taken over by billionaires in 2021, they decided not to turn to 20-year-old Kylian Mbappe… but smash the bank for 30-something Chris Wood.
Looking at the killer kiwi this season, you have to hand it to the Toon: they actually recognised someone about to come good in the long-term. Not something anyone would have thought at the time when the now-Nottingham Forest striker became the 10th most expensive player over 30 of all time.
Wood's since been brushed down the list: perhaps he was a trailblazer for future endeavours in the transfer market…
10. Kalidou Koulibaly: £36m (Napoli to Chelsea)
For almost a decade, the words “Kalidou Koulibaly” were sprinkled through gossip columns like confetti. He was promised – by those who had actually watched him in Italy – as a transformational, yet glamorous Rolls Royce of a centre-back, tailor-made for single-handedly fishing Arsenal, Manchester United or whoever else out of a defensive crisis.
And perhaps he could have been that new-age Nemanja Vidic or pre-cursor to Van Dijk, had he moved in his peak. By the time he rocked up at Chelsea in 2022, seeking permission from John Terry to wear the no.26 shirt, he was a rapidly eroding rock for any burgeoning backline.
Koulibaly was far from disastrous, let down instead by the hype of the 2010s failing to return its investment into the 2020s. The Blues saw their shot to offload to Saudi a year later, and snatched with both hands.
9. Leonardo Bonucci: £37m (Juventus to AC Milan)
You're noticing a trend, by now, of directors ignoring age while conducting mad shopping sprees, right? In 2017, Milan conducted one of the boldest windows that Europe had ever seen – and that's impressive, even for Milan – bringing in the likes of Lucas Biglia, Hakan Calhanoglu, Ricardo Rodriguez and Andre Silva.
Bonucci was actually the costliest purchase of Milan's madcap trolly dash of 2017, which ended in disaster. Unsurprisingly, none of the new signings actually gelled that well together, with Vicenzo Montella being sacked as manager before fan favourite Rino Gattuso took the reins.
Centre-back Bonucci has since spoken openly about what a mistake it was to go to the San Siro, while Milan were understandably taken to task by UEFA for such wild spending and banned from European competition. Incredibly, the seven-time European champions paid close to £40m for a defender this long in the tooth. It's safe to say it didn't work out.
8. Paulinho: £37m (Barcelona to GZ Evergrande)
Is it just FFT that still isn't quite sure what happened between 2017 and 2019 in the life and times of Brazilian midfielder, Paulinho?
The serviceable Tottenham water-carrier unspectacularly scurried off to the Chinese Super League in 2015, we assumed, to never be heard of again. Yet two years later, Barcelona were hitting his release clause – and not only did he link up in a midfield with Ivan Rakitic and Andres Iniesta, he was actually quite good.
As strangely as he arrived, Paulinho left just a year later in a loan with an exorbitant obligation. We may never truly know why the midfielder graced us with that final season in Europe before shuffling back into the shadows but we're sort of glad he did.
7. Robert Lewandowski: £40m (Bayern Munich to Barcelona)
As this – or literally any other transfer-related list piece on FourFourTwo – will suggest, Barcelona have operated in the transfer market with little clarity since the departure of Neymar in 2017, cutting about like a Catalan Miss Havisham, running up credit card bills for dopamine hits and placing faith in just about anyone Dutch as a lord and saviour.
Barça's 2022 pursuit of Robert Lewandowski has all the hallmarks of Modern Barcelona: well over 30, a big name with wages to match and probably better options in the academy – let alone the rest of the market. And so, the predictability played out: Lewy fired Xavi to a title, before looking shot to bits in his second season.
New boss (and former boss) Hansi Flick has somewhat flipped the script, however, getting the best from the prolific Pole once more in what is shaping up to be a fair use of around £40m. Maybe times are a-changing at Camp Nou.
6. Marco Verratti: £41m (Paris Saint-Germain to Al Arabi)
Maybe one of the most underrated players of his generation, Marco Verratti was a truly gifted technician who spent the bulk of his adult life either pulling Paris Saint-Germain's strings or cluttering their medical room. That he never earned that move to a league more widely watched will surely diminish his legacy.
Fittingly, he's continuing the trend in his twilight, swapping Qatari-backed PSG for the Qatari Stars League. Verratti made the low-key switch in 2023, with PSG receiving a big fee – and so he'll likely retire in the shadow of bigger, noisier leagues, too.
5. Miralem Pjanic: £54m (Juventus to Barcelona)
This might be the height of Barcelona's silliness when it comes to transfers. For some reason, the Catalans decided to drop over £50m on 30-year-old deep-lying playmaker Miralem Pjanic, with Arthur Melo heading in the opposite direction for a similar fee.
Some have claimed that the move was purely a book-balancing exercise – and Pjanic's time in Spain may certainly testify to that. Formerly excellent at Juventus, Roma and even Lyon, the Bosnian was so woefully ineffective – not least because he had both Sergio Busquets and Frenkie De Jong in the pecking order ahead of him.
Pjanic was a hipster's favourite during his spell in Serie A. One wonders how a player with such incredible vision didn't see what everyone else could. He's still Barcelona's eighth-most expensive signing ever.
4. Casemiro: £65m (Real Madrid to Manchester United)
It's not often in top-level football that a panic buy looks quite so obvious from first glance. The lack of just about anyone in midfield at Old Trafford prompted Manchester United to stump over over 60 million of the Queen's finest for one of the best defensive midfielders in the world over the past decade… who it was very clear didn't have too much longer at the top.
But the issue was never with the fee: it was with the length of Casemiro's contract. A solid first campaign has long receded, with the Brazilian infamously told by Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher that “the football has left him”. Now, United are lumbered with a 32-year-old while building for the future.
It's proof of one thing: if Real Madrid are happy to sell one of their key players, maybe think twice about why that is. See Raphael Varane.
3. Neymar: £85m (Paris Saint-Germain to Al-Hilal)
PSG are sometimes given stick for their transfer dealings but they knew what they were doing with this one.
Neymar's €220m move from Barcelona to PSG in 2017 is still the most expensive transfer in the history of football – yet Al-Hilal paid more than that in total for a 31-year-old in 2023, with a reported €390m spent in total, on fee, wages and add-ons.
The net return for that outlay? Seven games, one goal, with Neymar playing just 428 minutes in total. Within a month of returning to boyhood Santos, he had already equalled the number of league games that he'd managed in Saudi Arabia. Simply, the worst transfer of all time.
2. Harry Kane: £90m (Tottenham to Bayern Munich)
It's incredibly hard to argue against Harry Kane being a good buy for Bayern Munich, who broke their transfer record for the England captain when he signed for them, aged 30.
His injury record has been spotless in recent seasons. He's ranked at no.2 in FourFourTwo's list of the best strikers in the world right now a year-and-a-half into his Bavarian adventure, and is at 20/1 to win the 2025 Ballon d'Or. It would be of no surprise to see Kane still scoring 20-25 a season in another two years when he's shot physically.
This is the right way to buy an over-30. Sign the best, just as they hit the milestone and their value decreases a little.
1. Cristiano Ronaldo: £105m (Real Madrid to Juventus)
This was supposed to be the catalyst. The serial winners of Italian football had everything else in place to take the next step and win the Champions League: except that ruthless machine in front of goal.
And the £100m or more that Cristiano Ronaldo – ranked at no.4 in FourFourTwo's list of the greatest players of all time – costs would surely be made up in marketing, too. CR7 smashed the previous record for an over-30 and signalled a new dawn for Juventus… but it wasn't exactly the one they pictured.
During Ronaldo's three years in Serie A, the Old Lady were knocked out of Europe by Ajax, Lyon and Porto, ditching Max Allegri for Mauricio Sarri, before he was replaced by Andrea Pirlo. The Scudetto dynasty stopped at nine on the trot and the Portuguese superstar quietly exited by the back door for Manchester United.
The less said about his stint there, too…
