There’s no art to buying top footballers when your coffers are full, and you don’t know what to do with the money. A clever and experienced manager can sometimes get a quality player for free. The following chapters feature ten big-name players who didn’t cost their new employers a penny on the transfer market. From Paul Pogba to Ruud Gullit and Sol Campbell, the following are the 11 best footballers who moved to a new club for free!
Esteban Cambiasso – Inter Milan (2004)
Argentinian midfielder Esteban Cambiasso started playing football at the professional level at 18. He immediately drew attention to himself with his immense talent. At age 20, he played for the senior national team and signed for one of South America’s most famous clubs – River Plate.
Only a year later, he was a player for Real Madrid, where he was another victim of too much competition. During two seasons at the San Bernabeu, he did not get many chances, and his performance growth seemed to be stuck at the least opportune time.
Only after he left as a free agent to Inter Milan in 2004 did his career return to an upward curve. He spent ten successful seasons there, winning the Serie A five times, Champions League, UEFA Super Cup, Club World Cup and many other trophies.
In the summer of 2014, he moved to Leicester City. Surprisingly quickly, he acclimatised to the English Premier League and established himself as one of the best midfielders in the competition.
By signing him, Leicester gained a combination of footballing intelligence and immense experience. Without his skills, who knows whether the team would have been able to stay among the elite. Even though he left for Olympiakos Piraeus after the 2014/15 season, in a way, he has a lot of credit for Leicester’s title.
Paul Pogba – Juventus Turin (2012)
At 14 years old, the midfielder Paul Pogba swapped French club Le Havre for Manchester United, where he would grow into a big star. However, he only played three league games for the first team and never got a bigger chance. In the summer of 2012, he went to Juventus Turin for free, where his talents soon shone through.
Pogba won the Italian title four times with the Old Lady and the domestic cup twice. He also led the team to the Champions League final, where it lost to Barcelona. He was in fantastic form at the European Championships in France, supporting the national team to the final. Following the championship, he transferred to Manchester United for a then-record €105 million, leaving a few years earlier as an unwanted player.
Jürgen Klinsmann – Sampdoria Genoa (1997)
Jürgen Klinsmann is one of the greatest legends of German football. The World Champion, European Champion, and Vice-Champion changed the jersey of eight clubs during his playing career. Still, the most notable successes came at Inter Milan and Bayern Munich. He won the UEFA Cup with the Italian side in 1991 and the Bavarian team five years later. The following season he also won the German title, to which he made a significant contribution.
He made a surprise return to Italy after the 1996/97 season. However, he did not head back to Milan but to Sampdoria Genoa. However, he only played eight league games for the club, scoring two goals; after that, he was released on loan to Tottenham, the swan song of his illustrious career.
Gianluca Vialli – Chelsea (1996)
There must have been several rewrites of the table with record amounts for football transfers in 1992. Frenchman Jean-Pierre Papin, who transferred from Marseille to AC Milan for £10 million, soon was trumped by Italian forward Gianluca Vialli, who went from Sampdoria to Juventus Turin for £12 million.
Vialli as captain, led the Old Lady to the domestic title in 1995, also winning the Italian Cup and Super Cup in the same year. Two years before that, he had enjoyed an overall win in the UEFA Cup and lifted the Champions League winners’ trophy over his head in 1996. Juventus never regretted buying him, but they did regret that he left for Chelsea completely free in 1996.
Vialli spent the last three seasons of his career at Stamford Bridge and was still a hugely valuable player, particularly in the first two. In a Chelsea jersey, Vialli played 78 games in which he scored 40 goals and helped the club to win the FA Cup, the League Cup, the Cup Winners’ Cup and subsequently lifted the UEFA Super Cup winners trophy above his head.
Cafu – AC Milan (2003)
Apart from a brief anabasis in Zaragoza, Spain, Brazilian defender Cafu played in his homeland until the age of 27, having already travelled to Europe in 1997 as a World (1994) and South American (1997) champion. AS Roma became his employer, and he spent six years there and was instrumental in winning the Italian title in 2001.
Cafu earned the nickname Il Pendolino (The Fast Man) during his engagement on the Apennine Peninsula, heading to rival AC Milan after his contract expired in the capital in 2003. In the colors of the Rossoneri, Cafu won his second Italian title (2004) and lifted the Champions League winner’s trophy above his head three years later. In 2008, he retired from his successful career at the club.
Ruud Gullit – Chelsea (1995)
Ruud Gullit was one of the players that Silvio Berlusconi brought to the San Siro in the second half of the 1980s and turned AC Milan into a European super club. The Holland all-rounder became the world’s most expensive player in 1987 but paid the cost of his purchase from PSV Eindhoven (£6m) handsomely. He has helped win Serie A three times, European Champions Cup twice, domestic Cup three times, UEFA Super Cup twice and the Intercontinental Cup.
He moved to Sampdoria Genoa in 1994 and helped the club win the domestic cup competition. Still, in June 1995, he headed to Chelsea for free. He spent three seasons at Stamford Bridge, though he did not play any games in the last one. By 1996, he was already in the role of acting coach. He became the first Dutchman to hold a coaching position in the Premier League.
Steve McManaman – Real Madrid (1999)
He was an offensive midfielder and great playmaker who played most of his career in a Liverpool jersey. He managed more than 360 games, scoring 66 goals. Steve McManaman was instrumental in winning the League Cup in 1995. He was supposed to leave for Barcelona in 1997 for £12.5 million. Still, he stayed at Liverpool for two more seasons and then headed to Real Madrid for free, spending four years there.
McManaman didn’t come to Madrid at the best of times. At the time, however, Madrid was going through a debt crisis. Indeed, White Ballet legend Raúl said: ‘This dressing room is a cesspit of lies, betrayal and slander. I pity new players like Steve McManaman for heading here. If he thinks he is transferring to one of the biggest clubs in the world, he’s making a big mistake.”
Madrid managers had to sell Predrag Mijatovic, Davor Šuker and Christian Panucci because of debts. Clarence Seedorf was sold shortly after McManaman arrived. However, the England legend eventually established himself as a precious player and helped reboot the club. By the time he left after four years, he had won two championship titles, two UEFA Champions League triumphs and a UEFA Super Cup win.
Sol Campbell – Arsenal (2001)
Try mentioning Sol Campbell’s name in front of Tottenham Hotspur fans and you’ll see how much hatred they continue to have for the English defender more than twenty years after he left the club. Former Albion international spent just under nine seasons at White Hart Lane and was one of the mainstays of the team.
When he was due to run out of contract in 2001, he was offered a new deal by Spurs that would have made him the highest-paid player in the club’s history. At first, Campbell agreed, but then he flipped, refusing to sign the contract and heading to his biggest rival – Arsenal – for nothing. To Tottenham fans, Liverpool’s Campbell has been the Judas who betrayed the club ever since.
He spent the next five seasons at Arsenal, during which time he won the Premier League twice and the FA Cup three times and was named PFA Player of the Season twice. Campbell then headed to Portsmouth in 2006, from where, via a brief stint at Notts County, he returned to Arsenal in 2010. He retired from the Newcastle United jersey a year later.
Henrik Larsson – Barcelona (2004)
The predecessor to current Swedish superstar Zlatan Ibrahimovic was his compatriot Henrik Larsson at the turn of the millennium. A native of Helsingborg, he left there in 1993 to join Feyenoord Rotterdam, with which he won the Dutch KNVB Cup twice, before moving to Celtic Glasgow after four seasons. He won the Scottish league four times with the Scottish club, won the national cup competitions four times and played in the UEFA Cup final in 2003.
The Scandinavian striker earned a good reputation in Europe that the richest clubs sought his services. Barcelona was probably the most promising, transferring him for free before the 2004/05 season and signing a one-year contract with an option for another year.
However, his first year at the Catalan club was marked by a serious injury to the anterior cruciate ligament and meniscus in his left knee. Even though he played only sixteen games and scored four goals that season, Barca exercised his option for another season. He managed 28 league games where he scored ten goals and added five more in cup duels.
Camp Nou did well to give Larsson a chance after his recovery, as he became the hero of the 2005/06 Champions League final at the end of the season. There, FC Barcelona beat Arsenal 2-1 at the Stade de France and the Swedish forward assisted both goals.
“People always talk about Ronaldinho, Eto’o or Giulio, but I saw only one player on the pitch – Henrik Larsson. He changed the game’s rules from when he came on the pitch in the 61st minute and decided Barcelona’s victory. That was his night.” Larsson then left Spain with two La Liga titles, a Super Cup triumph and a Champions League win, to return to his native Helsingborg.
Andrea Pirlo – Juventus Torino (2011)
Going into the 2006 World Cup, the midfielder Andrea Pirlo was an AC Milan player, where he had spent the longest part of his career. He was at the San Siro since 2001 and left ten years later when he headed to Juventus for free. He was in his prime footballing age at the tournament in Germany – he was just twenty-six years old and experienced enough to be one of the world’s most creative midfielders and best direct kick executors.
The world title he helped win at the time is the greatest but by no means the only notable achievement in the charismatic player’s football career. Already in 2000, he played a part in the Italian national team’s triumph at the European Under-21 Championships. Four years later, he was instrumental in the Olympic bronze medals.
At the 2012 Euros, he led Squadra Azzurra to the final. He has six Italian titles in his collection (twice with AC Milan and four times with Juventus), winning the Champions League twice (with AC Milan) and the Copa Italia (with Juventus). He triumphed in the 2007 Club World Cup with AC Milan. He ended his career in the American MLS with New York City.
Robert Lewandowski – Bayern Munich (2014)
One year after the departure of Mario Götze, Borussia Dortmund fans had to deal with yet another underdog. Robert Lewandowski, a Polish striker who was one of the most beloved players at the Westfalen Stadium, moved to the most prominent rival – for free. But since then, for Borussia supporters, he’s been the most hated person in the Bundesliga. When he returns to Dortmund in the jersey of an implacable rival, fans give him a hard time.
The Poland sharpshooter is already the second top scorer in Bundesliga history. He first became the competition’s leading goalscorer while still in a Borussia Dortmund jersey, the second time he did it in the 2015/16 season when he scored 30 goals and became the first Bundesliga footballer since 1977 to do so. His best seasons were also from 2017/18 to 2020/21.
Without the big man, who can say what Bayern would be. He’s deadly at the tip of the attack; he can score goals from every position equally well with his feet and his head. Critics may claim that he could improve defensively. However, Lewandowski is not on the pitch to defend; he is on the pitch to score goals. And, like a well-oiled and tuned machine, that’s exactly what he does.