The best free agent XI of the 21st Century

Midfield: Sami Khedira

Sami Khedira moved to Juventus from Real Madrid for free and won plenty of trophies

A lot of players on this list were surprisingly let go by their clubs prior to moving as free agents – moves that said clubs may well have lived to regret – but in the case of Sami Khedira, it didn’t really sound like Real Madrid had a choice.

Khedira – a World Cup winner with Germany in 2014 – was apparently offered a huge contract by Los Blancos but chose to leave the Bernabeu to avoid so much stress.

As it turned out, Khedira likely made the right decision. After an injury-hit season in 2014/15 that saw him reduced to just 11 league starts for Real, the summer of 2015 saw him sign a four-year deal with Juventus.

And despite suffering from a handful of nasty injuries in his first season at the Allianz Stadium, he ended up scoring 5 goals – his highest total since 2008/09 – as Juventus won the Serie A title.

Since then Khedira has beaten his best season in terms of goals – scoring 9 in 26 appearances in 2017/18 – and he’s won plenty more trophies at Juventus too, picking up 3 more Serie A titles, 3 Coppa Italias and was a Champions League finalist in 2016/17 – a game that saw his side lose out to his old team Real Madrid.

Khedira is now slowing down somewhat at the age of 32 – he made just 10 league appearances in 2018/19 in another injury-curtailed season and was recently cut from the German national squad – but it’d be hard to label his time at Juventus as anything but a success – his all-action midfield style has helped Juventus massively over the last few years.

Striker: Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Zlatan Ibrahimovic silenced a lot of his doubters with his tremendous form at Manchester United

When you take into account cumulative transfer fees, Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic is up there with the most expensive players in the history of football. Plying his trade at huge clubs like AC Milan, Barcelona and Paris St. Germain, by 2016 he’d won titles in Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands – and only a stint in the Premier League seemed missing from his ledger.

Even so, despite such a great and extensive record, a lot of fans were still cynical when Ibrahimovic signed for Manchester United as a free agent in the summer of 2016. It felt like a classic United vanity signing, but as it turned out, Zlatan more than lived up to his end of the bargain and had one of the best seasons of his career, taking the Premier League by storm.

Wasting no time, Ibrahimovic scored on his United debut as the Red Devils defeated Leicester to win the Community Shield, and then he found the back of the net in his Premier League debut in a game against Bournemouth too.

By February, the Swede already had 15 Premier League goals to his name – becoming the oldest player to score at least 15 goals in the competition at 35 years and 125 days old.

In the end, Ibrahimovic went on to score the goals that won United the EFL Cup, and then won the Europa League with them too, although he didn’t appear in the final due to a knee injury.

Even the injury became a plus point for him, as he refused to take a wage from United while he was out – quietening a lot of detractors in the process. He might not have led United to the Premier League title, but as a free agent signing, he was a huge hit.

Striker: Robert Lewandowski

Robert Lewandowski might've angered Dortmund fans with his move to Bayern Munich, but he's been a huge success there

One of the more controversial moves on this list – in a similar vein to Sol Campbell’s move from Tottenham to their bitter rivals Arsenal – Polish striker Robert Lewandowski made the move from Borussia Dortmund to Germany’s bigger, more successful club Bayern Munich in 2014, and while he’s gone onto massive success, it’s not hard to see why Dortmund fans would be bitter.

Lewandowski had become a legend at the club over 4 seasons; after somewhat of a slow start in 2010/11, he averaged 31 goals a season in the subsequent 3 and won two Bundesliga titles, as well as helping Dortmund to the final of the 2012/13 Champions League – where his side were coincidentally defeated by Bayern.

However, Lewandowski ended up in a dispute with Dortmund’s board with regards to his wages – which he felt were too low – in late 2013 and ended up signing a pre-contract with Bayern in January 2014 with the full transfer to take place that summer. Dortmund fans were so angry that they even stole the tyres from Lewandowski’s car.

In the end though, the Polish striker has had the last laugh. In his 5 seasons at the Allianz Arena he’s won 5 Bundesliga titles and 2 DFB-Pokals, and has averaged an astonishing 38 goals per season – winning the award for the league’s top goalscorer on 3 occasions.

He’s become a Bayern legend and has become the Bundesliga’s all-time leading foreign goalscorer – the very definition of a hugely successful free agent signing.