There will be Chelsea fans out there who have only watched Enzo Fernandez briefly in a handful of World Cup appearances. There will be those who have barely noticed him at all. And they may assume that he's a world-beater by that price tag.
He may well be: judging by the pantheon of World Cup Young Player Award winners – Thomas Muller, Kylian Mbappe, Franz Beckenbauer and a certain Pele – he could be about to follow suit. But equally, not all that glitters is gold when it comes to £100m players.
Here's a complete list of the other 10 and how they fared after making the mega-moves that took them into the stratosphere… from those who wished they'd never moved to those very nearly worth the cash.
Every £100m+ player ranked from worst to best
10. Romelu Lukaku
When the history books write up the tale of Romelu Lukaku, they may just skim over the second Chelsea chapter and pretend he was at Inter Milan all along. The player himself may too – since what started so well quickly descended into a season-long soap opera in which Thomas Tuchel realised he preferred countryman Kai Havertz leading the line and Big Rom took exception.
The Belgian stormed off to Sky Italia for an explosive interview, apologised but never really regained the fire he had when winning the Scudetto. He left for Inter at the end of the season on loan – just as he prophecised in that interview – but while he's a big-money flop, Blues fans have since wondered if they really had to pay quite so much. Inter were desperate for cash… how did they manage to get £100m for Lukaku quite so easily?
9. Philippe Coutinho
One can associate a series of images with the fall of Barcelona – and most of them are connected to poor Philippe Coutinho. The insane overspending of the Catalan giants in a desperate bid to replace Neymar? Yep, he's intrinsically linked to that. The shocking 4-0 loss at Anfield in the Champions League semi-final second-leg? His move away facilitated the Virgil van Dijk move, so yes. The 8-2 against Bayern Munich? He scored two of the goals while on loan.
Barcelona fiercely fought to keep Coutinho's value, looking to rehabilitate him in both their own team and Bayern Munich's before Aston Villa ultimately spared their blushes. His transfer to Camp Nou remains one of the most jaw-dropping extravagances in the history of the transfer market – and he's unfortunately probably now further from his peak than anyone else on this list.
8. Eden Hazard
Real Madrid's recruitment is so often spot on. So when rumours of Zinedine Zidane wanting more control in the market surfaced during his first spell in charge, his second spell was always going to be interesting.
Los Blancos don't really do Galacticos anymore but Eden Hazard felt like an old-school, "buy this guy at his peak" purchase, after the 2019 Europa League with Chelsea. It seems as if he's fully descended down the other side of the mountain, though, having struggled with injury, consistency and Spanish TV hosts tearing into him. You see, this is why you leave the transfer market to Florentino Perez when you manage at the Bernabeu.
7. Antoine Griezmann
Antoine Griezmann did a whole documentary about his decision to remain at Atletico Madrid and resist the clutches of Barcelona. 12 months later, he joined Barça anyway: like Lukaku, he's returned back to where he captured the form that made someone want to sign him for over £100m.
Atletico won the league without him, while Barcelona struggled to accommodate both the Frenchman and Lionel Messi into the same team, with both players looking to occupy the same spaces. Quique Setien tried a front two at one stage but Griezmann looked a shadow of himself and was jettisoned back to the capital before long. The documentary hasn't retained its value since, either.
6. Joao Felix
Now we're entering the realms of players who weren't hugely disappointing, though we expected more from them. And with Joao Felix now on loan in the Premier League, the Portuguese is fully in salvage mode.
It looked like the perfect fit, moving from Benfica to play in a very specific role behind a striker, replacing Griezmann. But as Diego Simeone has experimented with back threes and Atleti have lost their edge, regained with Luis Suarez and subsequently regained it once more, Felix has been a man with a fork in a soup kitchen, unable to find his niche, with reports surfacing every three weeks that El Cholo hates his guts.
He's not been actively bad but is hoping that Stamford Bridge resurrects his form. In hindsight, it's perhaps not the stabile situation he's seeking.
5. Cristiano Ronaldo
You know the story, well: it's basically a prequel to the Old Trafford return. Juventus were winning the title every season and signing Cristiano Ronaldo was meant to elevate them to a level that would allow them to compete in Europe, too.
While no one can fault CR7's knack for scoring goals by the bucketload, though – including decisive Champions League hat-tricks at Atletico, winning the Capocannoniere and taking the Old Lady to new highs of marketability – his spell coincided with them losing their status as perennial Italian champions, while European embarrassments at the hands of Ajax, Lyon and Porto have been left off a resume he's since taken to Saudi Arabia.
Ronaldo's Manchester United second coming has semi-confirmed for fans in Turin that attaching their sails to the legendary forward was a bad idea – despite how individually brilliant he may have been. It's now a long way back to where they were pre-Ronaldo.
4. Jack Grealish
"I should be scoring more, I should be getting more assists," Jack Grealish said after beating Wolves this season. "You know, I'm always going to have people talking about me with the amount I got brought for."
Grealish is in a funny boat, really. Few doubt that at 27, he will surf higher highs with Manchester City and prove himself to be a valuable member of Guardiola's gang. He's just not done it yet. He's not been bad by any stretch, either, with the £100m price tag seemingly clouding opinions on how he's performed thus far.
Had Grealish been signed on a free, perhaps the debate would be different around him. He's been a good signing: unlike everyone else on this list so far… just nowhere near justified the fee just yet. Joao Cancelo leaving the club for Bayern Munich on loan – and more specifically the area of the pitch that the Brummie likes to operate in – will no doubt strengthen his case.
3. Ousmane Dembele
It is outrageous that Ousmane Dembele cost quite so much – and not at all the player's fault. Some may say that it's outrageous, too, for him to be considered anything other than a flop for what he's contributed at Camp Nou, in five and a half years of injury-riddled expectation. Equally, not entirely his fault.
But Dembele has rarely been downright bad for Barça, not exactly thriving under the chaos but playing his way into getting a new contract in the Xavi era when things settled down, proving himself to be a useful player since. Incredibly, he's still just 25. Comparisons to Kylian Mbappe might be a little too much but there's still a player in there – and Barcelona are starting to find it now.
Was he a good signing? Overall, yes. It just took a little while. Had he have joined for the £50m he was probably worth, however, he'd probably have been offloaded years ago.
2. Neymar
Neymar's critics have their ammunition. He's missed an awful lot of crunch knockout games, for a start, while the culture of Paris Saint-Germain has been revolutionised by his presence. He came to win a Ballon d'Or and the Champions League. He's done neither.
On the other hand, it's hard to argue with the pure numbers: 169 games, 117 goals. He's been accused of only turning up occasionally but clearly, he turns up more often than not. Judging him purely as a footballer, he has been exceptional most of the time, in a volatile environment: this is PSG, after all, perennial bottlers rather than a Real Madrid or Liverpool, who seemingly always do something in Europe, regardless of flux.
It's hard not to quantify Neymar as an overall success with asterisks. Looking through this list, there are players who would've given a left leg to be considered that.
1. Kylian Mbappe
Kylian Mbappe may actually have exceeded expectations. We knew he was going to be good – but he joined the club the same summer as Neymar and didn't take long to become The Man at all. He's become the very face of the club, the example that Neymar could have been.
And PSG have failed to conquer Europe despite Mbappe's efforts rather than because of them: just look at the moments he's given them. He has 196 strikes in not too many more games. He will likely break the club goalscoring record at 24. The French president apparently asked him to stay and the ownership was willing to give him authority on decisions to keep him in Paris.
He was well worth that £160-odd million. The bumper contract to keep him there longer? Well, now he's working on whether he's worth that…
