Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez is edging towards a transfer that would place him in a category all of his own. After months of speculation, followed by weeks of uncertainty and then days of growing expectation, his move from Chelsea to Manchester City now looks close to completion.<\/p>\n
According to The Athletic, City are prepared to pay $169 million (\u00a3125 million) for the midfielder. That figure would equal the Premier League record set last summer, when Liverpool spent the same amount on Alexander Isak from Newcastle United. On the global stage, only Paris Saint-Germain\u2019s double signing of Neymar Jr. and Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 has cost more.<\/p>\n
What makes Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s case unusual is not simply the scale of the fee, but the pattern it would complete. If the move goes through at that price, he would become the only player in history to command two transfers above \u00a3100 million. His first came in January 2023, when Chelsea signed him from Benfica for \u00a3106 million, a deal that was then a British transfer record.<\/p>\n
That record is now in line to return to him. Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s Chelsea move had already marked him out as one of the most expensive players ever, but a switch to City would lift him into a different kind of distinction, one no other footballer has reached.<\/p>\n
He is not, however, the only player to reclaim the transfer record twice. That honour belongs to Allan Clarke, who first moved to Leicester City for \u00a3150,000 before Leeds United paid \u00a3165,000 for him in 1969. In Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s case, the sums are on an entirely different scale, but the historical significance is just as clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fern\u00e1ndez is close to a record-equaling City move that would make transfer history again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18916,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,238],"tags":[59,180,182],"class_list":["post-18917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-manchester-city","tag-featured","tag-player-news","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}