The demanding and competitive nature in modern football means top teams splash big money on the players they feel can contribute to the team’s domestic as well as continental ambitions. There have been a lot of instances where teams have been able to nurture talents from a very young age but it is not necessary that these players would stay with the same club over the course of their long careers.
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Like in most cases, they are either scouted and signed up by big spenders or they simply fall off the radar due to the pressure associated with professional football.
However, there have been cases where players who simply couldn’t make it in their club’s setup in the first place were later re-signed for huge sums of money after making a name for themselves elsewhere. Here we take a look at some of the players who eventually returned to their old club for a higher fee.
#5 Nicolas Anelka to PSG for £20m
Nicolas Anelka played for as many as 12 clubs in his entire career but he started off at Paris Saint-Germain in 1996 as a highly rated youngster who had great potential for scoring goals. He joined newly appointed manager Arsene Wenger at Arsenal a year later as a 17-year-old and made his breakthrough to the first team the following year after a long-term injury to striker Ian Wright.
The Frenchman contributed majorly to the Gunners’ domestic double in the 1997-98 season and also won the PFA Young Player of the Year award next season after he was the club’s top scorer with 17 league goals.
Anelka earned a move to Real Madrid in the summer of 1999 but failed to score a single goal in his first five months at the club. Things never went according to plan after he had a bust-up with manager Vincent Del Bosque and his former club came calling in 2000 for a fee of £20m. The striker enjoyed a hero’s welcome in Paris but failed to live up to the expectations and eventually went on loan to Liverpool in 2001 before signing a permanent deal with Manchester City a year later for a then club record fee.
#4 Nemanja Matic to Chelsea for £21m
Serbian midfielder Nemanja Matic signed for Chelsea in 2009 from MFK Košice for a fee around £1.5m on a four-year-contract. But he failed to make it into the first team and was later loaned out to Vitesse Arnhem before he was shipped off to Benfica in 2011 as a part of the deal that saw David Luiz arrive at Stamford Bridge for the first time.
In his three years under manager Jorge Jesus, Matic was converted from a playmaker to a defensive midfielder and played a key role for the side. The Serbian won the Primeira Liga Player of the Year award in 2013 and it didn’t take long for his former employees to come knocking.
Matic returned to Chelsea in 2014 for a fee of £21m and has been a key member of the squad ever since. He played a vital role in the club’s 2014-15 league title winning campaign under Jose Mourinho and was also named in the PFA Team of the Year.
#3 Cesc Fabregas to Barcelona for £24.5m
Cesc Fabregas was sold his youth days by Spanish giants FC Barcelona who bought him back in 2011 after eight years in the English capital with Arsenal where he joined as a 16-year-old and eventually went on to become club captain.
The Spaniard’s move to the Nou Camp came after his highly impressive tenure with the Gunners where he established himself as one of the club’s most creative midfielders ever. In fact, statistics from five years before his departure from the Emirates revealed that the player created around 466 goal scoring chances, mustered 86 assists and scored 48 goals, a number better than Xavi and Andres Iniesta at that point despite both of them playing more games.
Fabregas joined a Barcelona side that had won three La Liga titles in a row and two Champions League titles in three years and made around 96 appearances for the club across all competitions before completing a controversial return to England with Chelsea in 2014. He has already made over 100 appearances and won two league titles with the Blues.
#2 Mats Hummels to Bayern Munich for £28m
Mats Hummels started off in Bayern Munich’s youth academy as a six-year-old and signed his first professional contract in 2006 but only managed to make a single appearance for the club before being loaned out to Borussia Dortmund where he made his name.
Hummels eventually signed for Dortmund in 2009 and spent seven years at the club making over 200 appearances for them. The defender was also a key element of Jurgen Klopp’s side that trounced his former club Bayern to the league title in 2010-11 when he was paired alongside Neven Subotic as the first choice centre-backs. With the duo at the back, the club registered the best defensive record in the history of Bundesliga.
Hummels signed an extension with the club after their domestic double in the 2011-12 season but on 10 May, 2016, it was confirmed that the player would be joining his former club following in the footsteps of former teammates Mario Gotze and Robert Lewandowski.
#1 Paul Pogba to Manchester United for £89.3m
Manchester United letting go of Paul Pogba for free is considered as one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s biggest blunders in his illustrious and unmatched managerial career where he went on to achieve everything he wanted over a period of 26 years. The player, who was a part of the United academy, left on a free transfer to Juventus in 2012 after being disappointed at the lack of opportunities provided to him at the club.
Pogba quickly flourished under Antonio Conte in Italy and enjoyed continued domestic success and also played in the Champions League final of 2015 in Berlin but ended up on the losing side to Luis Enrique’s FC Barcelona.
In 2016, Manchester United broke Gareth Bale’s existing transfer record by splashing €105 million (£89.3 million) for the Frenchman. Pogba played a key role in United’s Europa League final win over Ajax by scoring the opening goal which helped them acquire their first continental trophy in nine years.
