The most expensive footballer

What would you buy for 200 million pounds? 137 properties in Kensington, the most expensive posh locality of London, six Greek islands, An IKEA coffee table for every person in Namibia and the list goes on. However, France-based football club Paris Saint-Germain FC (PSG) had other plans. Bankrolled by Qatari oil rich owners, the club pulled out an era defining transfer, as they managed to land Neymar Jr from Spanish giants Barcelona FC for a record transfer fee of 198 million pounds.

Many coaches, writers and journalists across the world, including the Barcelona hierarchy, never thought the transfer would happen but now it is a clear signpost in the history of modern football.

Neymar Jr along with Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, has been the attacking trident for Barcelona. The trio dubbed as MSN used to terrorise the opposition with their skilful and breath-taking football. Neymar is a prodigious football talent. Ever since his professional debut for Santos FC in Brazil, there is no looking back for the 25-year-old Brazilian.

After playing for five years for Santos, he was snapped up by Barcelona for a record 71.5 million pounds. It was in Barcelona, he wowed every football fan with his dazzling displays. However, as a few sections in the Spanish media claim, he was feeling overshadowed by Lionel Messi, and reportedly wanted to move out.
When PSG came knocking on the door, Neymar saw it as an opportunity to come out of Messi’s shadow. Transfer saga irritated Barcelona fans, who dubbed the man as a traitor.

Finally, when PSG unveiled Neymar as their player on August 3, the world shook in awe of not just the transfer amount that they paid to Barcelona but 5,96,000 pounds in wages per week the club is going to play to the superstar.

“What motivated me to join my new teammates is to help the club to conquer the titles that their fans want. Paris Saint-Germain's ambition attracted me to the club, along with the passion and the energy this brings. I played four seasons in Europe and I feel ready to take the challenge. From today, I will do everything I can to help my new teammates, to open up new horizons for my club and to bring happiness to its millions of supporters around the world,” Neymar Jr said at his first press conference in PSG shirt.

At PSG, he will be tasked with spearheading their bid to reclaim the French league title after Unai Emery's side finished second to Monaco last season. It ended a four-year streak of PSG winning Ligue 1. But domestic success will be only part of what PSG are aiming to achieve with Neymar in their ranks. Since they were bought by Qatar Sports Investments in 2012, the furthest the club have gone in the Champions League is the quarter-final stage.

For Neymar, he looks win Ballon d’Or with PSG, besides raking up as many titles as possible. He can catapult the side to the domestic championship but if he manages to win the champions league with PSG, it would be quite a feat, which seals his superstardom.

However, not everyone is impressed with the transfer. English football club Arsenal’s manager Arsene Wenger claimed that the transfer of Neymar from Barcelona to PSG is ‘beyond rationality’. “For me, it is the consequence of the ownerships that have completely changed the whole landscape of football in the last 15 years. Once a country owns a club, everything is possible. It becomes very difficult to respect the financial fair play. Now you can have different ways or different interests, which allow a club to represent a country and attract such a big player to come to them,” he opined.

German giants Bayern Munich’ chief executive Karl-Heinz Rummenigge claimed that the German champions would never spend anywhere near the £198million that Paris Saint-Germain paid for Neymar, saying he would prefer a stadium with that money.