The Bayern Munich icon Karl-Heinz Rumminegge once mused: “There are some players who do not come with a price tag.” He just wasn’t being ambitious enough.
Paris Saint-Germain’s acquisition of Neymar Jr. from Barcelona for a record-shattering fee of $263 million in 2017 proved that no player is unattainable in the modern realm of state-owned clubs. While that high watermark has not been surpassed since, it has inflated the sums splashed around an increasingly extortionate transfer market.
