5 transfers that shocked the football world

So the January transfer window is over again and it turned out to be a fascinating one, as Phillipe Coutinho became the most expensive January signing yet; we saw big moves like Alexis Sanchez to Manchester United, Lucas Moura to Tottenham and Olivier Giroud to Chelsea, and overall more money was spent this January than any previous year.

With that said, though, none of the moves made were major shocks - they were expensive, for certain, but they were also largely to be expected, big money moves between big clubs with most of the transfers being logical.

Football history though is littered with plenty of transfers that did shock the football world to its core – whether they were record-breaking fees or a case of a player moving from his club to their most bitter rivals. Here are five of the most shocking transfers in football history.

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#1 Neymar to Paris St. Germain, 2017

Neymar Jr's move to Paris St. Germain marked a power shift in European football

Since the mid-2000’s, two clubs have dominated the world of football more than any others – Spanish giants Real Madrid and their rivals Barcelona. And during that time period, it was basically a given that if one of those clubs wanted a player, that player would end up there, and the only way they’d ever get rid of a player would be if they became surplus to requirements. And so everyone from Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale to Luis Suarez and Cesc Fabregas fit into the pattern.

That was until the summer of 2017 when out of nowhere, the power apparently shifted to France and to Paris St. Germain more specifically. When PSG – rich beyond their wildest dreams thanks to some Qatari investment in 2011 – were rumored to be attempting to sign Brazilian star Neymar Jr from Barca, it seemed like simple paper talk that wasn’t true. After all, Neymar had only been at the Nou Camp for four seasons and it felt like he was the natural successor to the legendary Lionel Messi.

But soon all of the rules would be out of the window. It was in early August when Barca announced that PSG had decided to pay Neymar’s release clause – somewhere over the figure of £200m, shattering the world record transfer fee – to take the Brazilian to France. And so it felt like the power no longer lays with the Spanish giants but with the nouveau riche, oil-minted Parisians. Neymar has proved a success in France – 26 goals in 25 games thus far – but his move may be looked back at in years as a major turning point, and it certainly rocked the football world to its core.

#2 Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano to West Ham United, 2006

Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano's move to West Ham was massively controversial

Back in 2006, highly-touted Argentine stars Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano were being linked with big teams all across Europe, from the giants of Spain’s La Liga to the wealthiest clubs in England’s Premier League. So it came as a monstrous shock when they made the move from Brazilian club Corinthians to relegation candidates West Ham United of all clubs in August 2006. Then-Hammers boss Alan Pardew seemed as surprised as anyone to pose for a photo with them, although he rarely deployed them as just four months later he was fired.

Within weeks of the move, rumours began to swirl around that the reason other clubs hadn’t been willing to touch the young Argentines was that their contracts weren’t owned by Corinthians, but by a third party – in this case, Media Sports Investment (MSI) who were also rumoured to be considering buying out....you guessed it, it's West Ham. The truth of what actually happened remains largely a mystery, but the general consensus is that West Ham never truly owned the contracts of the players.

At any rate, Mascherano was shipped to Liverpool on loan in January 2007 and later made a permanent move, while Tevez stuck around and almost single-handedly saved West Ham from relegation. He moved to Manchester United the following summer, and barely a year later in June 2008, the Premier League announced a full ban on any third-party ownership of players. It was a sorry state of affairs overall, but the fact that two world-class prospects ever moved to West Ham remains incredibly shocking to this day.

#3 Sol Campbell to Arsenal, 2001

To Tottenham fans, Sol Campbell will always be 'Judas' after his move to Arsenal

The fact that Sol Campbell – a bonafide world-class player at his peak and one of the best defenders to ever play for Tottenham Hotspur – wasn’t invited back to the club last summer when White Hart Lane was closed down goes to show that the scars from this controversial transfer still run deep in North London. Even now, the best part of two decades on, Campbell is still known as ‘Judas’ amongst hardcore Tottenham supporters.

Few Spurs fans at the time – with the club largely sitting in mid-table mediocrity – could’ve begrudged Campbell wanting to leave when his contract ended in 2001, even if it was another Premier League side. But to move to Arsenal – Tottenham’s most bitter local rivals – was simply unthinkable. But Campbell did just that despite being club captain, becoming the first man to make the move since goalkeeper Pat Jennings in 1977.

For his part, Campbell couldn’t see what he’d done wrong. He claimed Spurs simply weren’t in a position to match his ambitions of winning trophies, while Arsenal was – and indeed, he won two Premier League titles and three FA Cups with the Gunners. But what he lost was the respect of the Spurs fans, who subjected him to some of the worst abuse ever seen in football history. Campbell forgot a simple rule – that football is tribal, and some borders are simply not meant to be crossed.

#4 Mo Johnston to Rangers, 1989

Mo Johnston broke all the boundaries when he moved to Rangers despite being a Catholic

Perhaps no rivalry in European football is quite as bitter as the one between Glasgow clubs Rangers and Celtic, and it’s because it runs far deeper than the beautiful game. Rangers are of course a Protestant club while Celtic are Catholic, meaning there’s an unhealthy dose of sectarianism to the whole thing that other big rivalries simply don’t have. And so naturally – particularly at the peak of the Troubles in Ireland in the 1970’s and 1980’s – both clubs had certain policies. One of which at Rangers was to never sign known Catholic players.

That all changed in 1989 when manager Graeme Souness decided to sign striker Mo Johnston from French outfit Nantes. Not only was Johnston a known staunch Catholic, but he’d actually played for Celtic prior to his Nantes move and had scored bagfuls of goals and even won the Scottish Premier Division title with them. And so naturally, when his move to Rangers was announced, all hell broke loose in Glasgow. Celtic fans burned effigies of Johnston, and even Rangers fans weren’t happy, with some hardcore Protestants vowing never to return to Ibrox.

Throughout the whole issue, somehow both Johnston and Souness kept cool heads and tried to make the move purely about the football. And eventually, Johnston won over the Rangers fans by scoring plenty of goals for his new club and helping them to win two Scottish Premier Division titles during his time there. An injury-time winner against Celtic in November 1989 probably helped, too!

#5 Luis Figo to Real Madrid, 2000

After leaving Barcelona for Real Madrid, the reaction to Luis Figo was hostile, to say the least

As the 1990’s came to a close, Barcelona was a club almost at the peak of their powers once again after a somewhat leaner period in the middle of the decade. They won two La Liga titles (1997/98 and 1998/99) and captured the imagination of the fans again like they had in the years of Johan Cruyff’s ‘Dream Team’, but one man stood out above all others – Portuguese midfield talisman Luis Figo. He was so good that one teammate even stated Barca’s game plan was simply to give Figo the ball and let him do the rest.

So in the summer of 2000, the football world was shocked to its core when it was announced that Real Madrid had broken the world transfer record to trigger the Portuguese’s release clause – around £37m – and bring him to the Bernabeu. Transfers between the bitter rivals had taken place before but never had one side simply bullied the other to take a player in this manner. And suddenly, Figo went from being the hero of the Catalan fans to the most hated man on planet earth.

Returning to the Nou Camp for the first time in October 2000, Figo was met with merciless hatred probably never seen before in football. He was met by a banner reading “100 million pieces of silver” – comparing him to Judas – and even had a pig’s head amongst other objects thrown at him when he attempted to take a corner. Apparently, Figo could barely understand the reaction himself. “I feel like I’m in the skin of a murderer” was supposedly the quote.

But this transfer wasn’t just shocking because it was a Barcelona icon moving to Real. It was a power-play from Real Madrid to ensure that they, and only they, were recognized as the biggest club in the world again, as they had been decades earlier. The move ushered in the era of the ‘Galacticos’, and nothing has been the same in European football ever since.