Surely Alf Common from Sunderland to Middlesbrough - the world's first ã1,000 transfer. It shook the world so much that the F.A. put a cap on transfer fees after that, but couldn't enforce it. Common almost single-handedly saved Middlesbrough from relegation, and once clubs saw that money talked, there was no holding transfer fees back.
what year was this? how long did it take for transfers to reach 100k, then a million, how long for a 100 million?
Common's ã1,000 transfer was in February, 1905. For a lovely cartoon showing Common (with ã1,000 across his chest) leading a frightened Lady Middlesbrough away from the awful clutches of Second Division, see http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgu...=X&biw=1020&bih=583&tbm=isch&prmd=ivns&itbs=1 Not sure about your other questions. From the 1950s, the world record passed out of Britain. River Plate, Real Madrid &co became the world's big spenders then, and I lost track. Television has made the last 10-15 years unlike anything before. I mean, even in the late 1980s, Barcelona shook the world by paying an incredible ã3 million for Diego Maradona (his boot laces would bring that at auction today!). Even in the 1990s. a player of Gascoigne's calibre cost ã4.5m. The differing standards between ages is incredible. I remember as a kid hearing the news that Sheffield Wednesday had signed Jackie Sewell for ã34,000. My old man sat in the corner of the kitchen and muttered "No bloody man's worth that"! But, of course, in those days you needed a ration book to buy a quarter pound of butter, too. I guess ã34,000 was dream-money in that world. Roll, on, roll on.
