Lent.az
One way to assess the success of a transfer is to look at the player's performance for their new team. But how do you assess unsuccessful transfers?
Lent.az reports that ESPN offers its own metric: calculating how much of the money spent on new players metaphorically remains among the reserve players.
The journalists even developed a formula: the transfer fee is multiplied by the amount of playing time the player spends among the reserve players. The higher the resulting amount, the more unsuccessful the transfer.
ESPN conducted a study among the top five European leagues, and only one transfer outside the Premier League made the list of the 20 worst transfers: Ardon Jashari moved to Milan, but immediately broke his leg, which caused him to miss almost all of his new team's games.
The dominance of Premier League clubs in the ranking is easy to explain: English clubs spend significantly more money on transfers than teams from other leagues.
According to the formula proposed by ESPN, the worst transfer was Alexander Isak from Newcastle to Liverpool.
Poor form and injuries limited the Swede to just eight appearances for the Reds, totaling 429 minutes. According to ESPN, Isak cost the Merseysiders 107.88 million euros on the substitutes' bench.
The transfer of Florian Wirtz is also in the top ten worst, but the German is in ninth place because he played more often.
The 10 worst transfers of the summer of 2025
