Top 50: Where the Transfer Money Went

How to read this table

Ranking. Players are ranked by the largest single reported transfer fee paid by a Premier League club to sign them, from the 2016/17 summer window to the September 2026 window. Each player appears once, with his biggest Premier League purchase only.

Scope. “African” means the player represents, or has represented, a CAF nation at senior level. Loans, free transfers and sales out of the Premier League are excluded. Two examples:

• Salah’s 2026 exit from Liverpool was a free transfer and does not count.
• Yan Diomandé’s record €125m move to Real Madrid is excluded because no Premier League club was involved.

Fee. The fee is the widely reported initial fee in pounds sterling, excluding add-ons. Clubs rarely disclose fees officially, so these are media-reported figures and different outlets vary.

Formed. This column shows where the player was registered between roughly ages 12 and 18, based on public career histories. It is the variable that decides who receives FIFA solidarity money.

Est. to African clubs. This is the theoretical maximum solidarity entitlement of the player’s African training clubs on that transfer, under FIFA RSTP Annexe 5:

• 0.25% of the fee per season registered between ages 12 and 15
• 0.5% of the fee per season registered between ages 16 and 23

The age brackets are approximate. The estimate is not a record of money actually paid.

Confidence. ✓ means the fee or the career detail was checked against reporting cited in this research. ~ means the figure comes from Transfermarkt or press archives and has not been re-verified for this piece. Verify every ~ row before print.

How much went back to Africa?

The spend. Premier League clubs paid about £1.71 billion for these 50 players.

• About £990m (58%) was spent on 31 players formed wholly or partly in Africa.
• About £717m (42%) was spent on 19 players formed in Europe.
• At the very top the balance flips: six of the ten biggest fees were for European-formed players.

The solidarity pot. Five per cent of £1.71bn is roughly £85m. At most about £22.2m of that was due to African training clubs. That is about 26% of the pot, or 1.3p for every pound Premier League clubs spent. Most of the remainder was due to training clubs in France, England, the Netherlands, Spain and elsewhere, or was never triggered at all (see the next point).

Money lost to the calendar. Before July 2020, a transfer between two English clubs triggered no solidarity. Three moves in the table fall into that gap:

• Mané (Southampton → Liverpool)
• Iheanacho (Man City → Leicester)
• Ayew (Swansea → West Ham)

Under today’s rules, those deals would have been worth roughly £1.7m to Génération Foot and to Nigerian and Ghanaian clubs. They received nothing.

Money that depended on paperwork. Only about £8.8m of the £22.2m relates to transfers made after the FIFA Clearing House began automatic distribution in November 2022. Those transfers are Baleba, Ndiaye, Marmoush, Kudus, Onana, Ouattara, Jackson, Minteh, Sangaré and Sulemana. The other £13.4m or so relied on training clubs identifying and claiming what they were owed. No public data shows how much of it was actually collected. A realistic range for money that reached African clubs through solidarity on these 50 deals is therefore somewhere between about £9m and £22m, probably closer to the lower end for the pre-2022 deals.

The comparison that matters. ESPN reported that Lille is owed 20% of any Baleba fee above the €30m Brighton paid in 2023. If that holds, the sell-on on the Manchester United deal is worth roughly €9m (about £8m) to one French club. That is more than a third of the estimated maximum solidarity due to every African club across all 50 transfers combined. It is the article’s “floor vs ceiling” point, measured in pounds.

What this estimate does not count:

• The original fees African clubs received when they first sold these players (for example, to Metz, Salzburg, Lille or Nordsjælland). These are mostly undisclosed and usually small.
• Sell-on clauses held by African clubs, which are rarely disclosed.
• Training compensation, a separate FIFA mechanism.
• Solidarity from every other transfer in these players’ careers (for example, Kudus’s £38m move from Ajax to West Ham, or Baleba’s move from Lille to Brighton).
• Right to Dream’s integrated model, where much of the value is captured through its ownership of Nordsjælland rather than through solidarity.

The true total flowing to African football from these careers is therefore higher than the solidarity figure alone, though probably not by an order of magnitude.

Disclaimers

• Fees are reported, not official. Most Premier League clubs do not disclose transfer fees. Figures are those widely reported by Transfermarkt and major outlets, rounded, and exclude add-ons unless noted. Different outlets report different sums; where a notable discrepancy exists, it is flagged. Euro deals were converted at approximate rates prevailing at the time.
• “Formed” is an informed reconstruction. Registration histories between ages 12 and 23 are held by national federations and FIFA’s systems and are not public. Our classification relies on published career histories, club announcements and profiles. Where a youth history is unclear, the age brackets are approximate.
• Solidarity figures are estimates of maximum entitlement, not payments. Actual amounts depend on proper registration with the African club in each season, FIFA Clearing House compliance, whether payment was made or claimed before November 2022, the €100 minimum threshold, and any unregistered “missing years” in the player’s history. We have not had access to any electronic player passport or allocation statement.
• Nationality. “African” refers to the senior national team the player represents. Several players in the table were born and raised in Europe; this is a description, not a judgement.
• Not advice. This analysis is for editorial purposes and is not legal or financial advice on any club’s entitlements.
• Currency and date. Data is current as of 19 September 2026. Later transfers or corrections are not reflected.