5 most expensive Spanish footballers of all time

3) Gaizka Mendieta - £40.1m

Gaizka Mendieta was a flop in Serie A even though he was one of the best midfielders in Spain

Oh, look! Another Valencia player makes the list. But this was before their finances derailed the club and almost relegated them. Back then Los Che were a force to reckon with in La Liga and were among the top four clubs in the league.

Gaizka Mendieta was a midfielder who spent nine seasons with the club and played under a number of managers who got the best out of him. But he wasn't always a midfielder, he started out as a right-back before he was deployed as a midfielder, much to the fans' astonishment.

Under Claudio Ranieri and later Hector Cuper, Mendieta's stock rose and he soon became one of the most coveted midfielders in Spain, prompting the Valencia president to say: "I'd rather go hungry than sell him!"

But when Lazio came in with a monstrous 7,500m pesetas (€45m) bid for the reigning 'Best Midfielder in Europe', they accepted as it was the highest fee paid for a Spanish player at the time.

However, he could not make it work in Serie A and was branded one of the most expensive flops ever and the "most disappointing waste of money in the history of the game" as he failed to live up to the standards set by Pavel Nedved and Juan Veron who had moved to Juventus and Manchester United respectively.