The history of the most expensive defender in the world

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By Rob Hoskin

Published Aug 6, 2019

Maguire is now the most expensive defender in football history

Manchester United have made Harry Maguire the most expensive defender in the history of football.

The Red Devils paid Leicester £80 million for the centre-back, surpassing both the amount Juventus paid for Matthijs de Ligt and Liverpool paid for Virgil van Dijk.

As good as Maguire is, to think that he’s the most expensive defender ever is pretty crazy.

After all, just five years ago he was signing for Hull City for a mere £2.5 million.

Maguire ended up getting relegated with Hull but United have now paid 32 times the amount the Tigers paid back in the summer of 2014.

It just sums up how crazy the football transfer market is right now.

Another way of identifying just how inflated the market has got is by looking at the history of the world’s most expensive defender.

And using figures from transfrmarket.com, we’ve done just that.

Going all the way back to the first ever transfer fee paid for a defender - Henk Tijm back in 1961 - we’ve followed the record all the way up to yesterday when Maguire signed for Man Utd.

Let’s take a look: